SDN computer RPG questions

[Thanas]

However, in order to get the Leopard 2 or the coveted Leopard 2/PzH2000 combo, you first need to defeat the Fundiland scum. So I would advise using the T-34 up to that point and then tech up.

[Shroom Man 777]

My brain just exploded. God damn you FROD! Goddamn you to hell!

[Ford Prefect]

However, in order to get the Leopard 2 or the coveted Leopard 2/PzH2000 combo, you first need to defeat the Fundiland scum. So I would advise using the T-34 up to that point and then tech up.

Isn't it normally difficult to get the armour mods for the T-34 by that point in the game? I mean, I guess you could hold off going to Fundiland until after the Knight Astrum Clades quest line, but I'd think by that point you should be able to clear Fundiland with even mid-tier PCs without mecha summons. That said, a lot of people swear by the Challenger 1 for Fundiland, which you can get in the Jordanian secret quests in Israel/Palestine No-Go, even though it's an even worse end-game tank-type than the King Tiger.

That said, how DO you get the PzH2000? I've never been clear on this, because it's my understanding that it's not actually random. Artillery-type mecha summons are so rare and the only time I saw a PzH2000 was when I was doing was when I was level twenty five doing the FUQ Item World power level trick, and obviously at level 25 on your first playthrough at level 25 you can't get any mecha summons. Am I stuck trying to find one in Item Worlds or is there really a way to make it appear in the HAB Dreamland tank hangar?

[Thanas]

Having a Party member with Raceclass "German" works wonders. You can then get them at the Bundeswehr surplus store if you have at least a neutral reputation.

[Ford Prefect]

Man, that is potentially massive cheese. That bad rep you start off with with the Europeans nations absolutely plummets if you do the Translator secret questline in the EU Espionage chapter that you get through G&C, and while you normally wouldn't get a German character until after the first Thanas battle, you could do the Item World trick with Lonestar's Trousers to get Young Thanas by, what chapter 5? Unless the price is really high (and I doubt it because you can get a Panther at the Bundeswher surplus for 50,000 kudos on Thursdays) you could have a mecha-summon with the highest base ACR and third highest base ACR growth in the game before you hit level 80. I mean, it would be really hard because getting Young Thanas that early is borderline impossible without favourable Geocon, but the Lonestar's Trouser time warp can be used multiple times so there's opportunity for trial and error.

Seriously I've been looking up the PzH2000 and the way it synergises with the Leopard 2 is crazy. The fact that the PzH2000 gets Perfect Criticals based on ACR means that it's better at crits than RedImperator (!) and based on average stats at lvl.9999 on the sixth Replay means that its Time On Target combo with a cheesed Leopard 2 would be about two thirds as good as Dalton's Infinite Big Bang Punch (!!). You could get that on your second playthrough. Jesus Christ.

[Thanas]

Keep in mind though that this will make you very vulnerable to plane summons like the dreaded Thunderbolt. In order to avoid this, it is best to get NPC Shep or Stuart, each can provide you with the F-22 or an updated AA missile battery.

[Imperial Overlord]

Jesus fucking Christ, that's why my mecha summons blow. Thanks Ford. I've been doing it all wrong.

I have a couple questions about race/nation selection. Obviously German makes a lot more sense if you're actually doing the mecha quest line right. I haven't tried Russian yet, but it seems pretty good. I've tried American, but the "American Exceptionalism" ability appears to just debuff me. Is that solved in a patch or am I missing something (again)?

Also, does choosing Canadian give you any worthwhile benefits?

[Ford Prefect]

Jesus fucking Christ, that's why my mecha summons blow. Thanks Ford. I've been doing it all wrong.

Straight forward upgrades is fine on tank-types if you're doing a single playthrough, but they get increasingly abysmal with subsequent playthroughs. Plane-types are some of the best, because they can all take Thrust Vectoring, which is seriously the best upgrade in the game. Mecha summons can be hard to use correctly because in the process of levelling up they're a lot less robust than PCs, but by second and third playthrough they're pretty much the best way to do damage until you get the ultra-high tier characters like Final Thanas and Dalton. Because they gain levels faster than player characters your focus should always be on stat growth and natural skills through Replays. When you start getting the high tier robot-types from Gundamechanimumango II: Electric Boogaloo and the experimental plane-types the only upgrades you should be looking into are things like Thrust Vectoring and the ECM stuff. Avoid the armour packages like the plague though: they have the best base effects (seriously they grant special resistances, which is almost as good as skill stuff you get from Thrust Vectoring) but they kill stat growth.

EDIT: Actually, I can see some use for armour upgrades on tank-types in the One Shot missions in the Colliseum, because the harsh effective level caps and huge array of enemy skill types, and the fact that mecha summons destroyed in One Shot are gone permanently, so there's no need to plan long term. Whack out a Challenger 2 or Abrams spear with the top tier armour packages and you'll get practically halfway through One Shot for low kudos.

Also, does choosing Canadian give you any worthwhile benefits?

Initially I thought the Canadian Raceclass was a little gimmicky, but now I think it's actually better in some ways than Lunarian. It's not the only Raceclass with a special resistance, but Ice is pretty much the best special resistance outside of Death and Megiddo. They're by far the best Raceclass for a protagonist in the Global Mean Temperature chapters, and they build up some pretty insane natural spell-based techs (though admittedly Raceclasses with an emphasis on weapon techs and mecha summons have better damage dealing cheese). Canadian is a lot of fun in SDN Must Die - Heaven or Hell because of the serious balancing act you need to play with resistances. It's more chellenging but more rewarding, though personally my main run works a Spacenoid protag.

I still don't know how the hell their LOG growth works though lol, it's almost as screwy as Mongolian VAL. Lunarian is still the best for strong LOG but Canadian works well, especially if you're cross-classing spell techs through the Tev & Nit - White & Black events in chapter 17.

[Surlethe]

Real quick, before I get down to work, "American Exceptionalism" only works if you have high industry stats across your party and you apply it to, e.g., mech summons and other tech attacks. This lets you (for limited periods of time, and quite literally in some cases) spam those mechanical summons and tech attacks by decreasing cost to nearly zero. It also enables, if you have Stuart or Shep (or, in some cases, Marina) in your party, APC 47 nuclear strikes without having to collect all three hundred goddamned million 1960S GRAPHS.

The problem is when you try to use "American Exceptionalism" in conjunction with other kinds of attacks, especially against characters of non-American class. That's when you get debuffed.

[The Yosemite Bear]

hey it also works rather well if you complete the "Justice League" quests too, since most Superhero summons get upgraded to wank-levels with that ability. The only danger is the "Captain America" summons which will attack your party with too much American Exceptionalism.

[MKSheppard]

I've recently received a large amount of complaints regarding the "RACE TO THE MOON" sidequest accessible through Phong.

It appears that if you go with the 'Russian Simplicity' buff; your rockets keep exploding above a certain size; while with the 'Germanic Complexity' buff; your rockets get more reliable the bigger they get.

We are working on this and hope to address this issue by Christmas.

[Thanas]

As, however, we outsourced this to Paradox, it might just be that the problem will be persisting while you get a nice new interface to boot.

[Ford Prefect]

To be honest, I thought the weirdness surrounding the Russian Simplicity/German Complexity buffs made those Raceclasses more characterful. That element of random strangeness is what makes playing an American Raceclass protag fun - I mean if American Exceptionalism was a straightforward trait there'd basically be no reason to play because otherwise they're so vanilla. I mean I've never played a French or British Raceclass because their traits and stat growth is really bland.

[Civil War Man]

So the weirdest thing just happened to me while playing through SDN Must Die - Heaven or Hell. A little background:

While doing some quests to raise my reputation with the Mods of History, I looted an item called 1860S GRAPH. I just assumed it was an odd typo, considering how many of them managed to make it past the beta testers, and thought nothing of it.

Anyway, just a few minutes ago I was doing one of the mini-bosses for Heaven or Hell. I had Shep in my party, and had him use one of my excess graphs for a summon. However, I accidentally selected the 1860S GRAPH that had been sitting in my inventory for 2 chapters.

I'm not going to completely spoil what happens next, but the end result teleported my party to a sub-chapter called "The Devil Went Down to Georgia", which I can only describe as a combination FPS/RTS. After completing the area, I was teleported right back to where I left off in Heaven and Hell.

Turns out 1860S GRAPH is some stupidly super-rare item that only drops from certain random encounters in History. We're talking <1% from Confederates (take into account that at least 75% of History encounters are against Nazis). It enables a rare summon that doesn't do much, but it isn't consumed unless/until you use it to access The Devil Went Down to Georgia. This item is so rare, that the sub-chapter it unlocks is not required for 100% completion. The whole thing is basically a glorified easter egg.

[Ford Prefect]

Man, that's pretty cool. That said, I'm not surprised there's that kind of Easter egg. Remember the Raising the Yamato sidequest you cannot unlock by accident, which gets you Space Battleship Yamato as a mecha-summon? There's probably a bunch more like that. Though man <1% on Confederates is crazy. It'd probably be easier to Item World it with that sort of drop rate, but I don't know if it would conform to the other graph drops.

[Darth Fanboy]

Tee Hee, on my evil-alignment game save I redid the "Quest for the Vette" where you have to help Uraniun locate the perfect Corvette and instead of helping him acquire it I went with the option where I outbid him for it and now I have the Vette Mount.

Everytime my party goes to cities in the Oregon region though we get nasty reactions from the NPCs.

I also heard there was a mod coming out where you can add TrekDestroyer to your party, apparently the character had a lot of different skins made but the game's developers shot down the character in each iteration until he was cut from the game's script, but the skins were still left in the game files in the PARTINGSHOTS Directory.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

As, however, we outsourced this to Paradox, it might just be that the problem will be persisting while you get a nice new interface to boot.

Such is the mess that Square got itself into after wrestling development control back from Atlus so it could have the game out for the holiday season. Phong already brought up some of the weird stuff that Atlus hadn't finished debugging when Square decided to butt back in, like the duplicate NPC bug. There's also ShadowDragon's "alternate" way of completing the Impassable Tourist Bus of Doom quest, which Square claims works as intended, but Atlus insists that its developers were still in the process of refining it when Square ordered them to cease work on the game.

Fortunately, Paradox's involvement with the game never went beyond scrapping Atlus' original GUI and replacing it with their own. Atlus will have a patch for Impassable Tourist Bus of Doom available soon, but the Race to the Moon fix and the anticipated GUI overhaul will indeed have to wait until Christmas at the earliest.

[LadyTevar]

you can get a lot of fun results by reverse-pickpocketing things onto NPCs. Grenades, for example, especially with guys who have shit for Throwing skill but who're very, very hotheaded.

You really are stupid, aren't you. That tricks's been around since Fallout2 -- of COURSE it was going to be an option in SDN.

I have to admit, compared to the other quests, the Nit & Tev stuff is pretty straightforward. Its a love story... so I'm sure it's boring to all your MechaHeads. I loved it myself, but I'm biased

of course, I also did all the relationship quests in DragonAge, and fucked Alistar like a cheap whore

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

As, however, we outsourced this to Paradox, it might just be that the problem will be persisting while you get a nice new interface to boot.

Such is the mess that Square got itself into after wrestling development control back from Atlus so it could have the game out for the holiday season. Phong already brought up some of the weird stuff that Atlus hadn't finished debugging when Square decided to butt back in, like the duplicate NPC bug. There's also ShadowDragon's "alternate" way of completing the Impassable Tourist Bus of Doom quest, which Square claims works as intended, but Atlus insists that its developers were still in the process of refining it when Square ordered them to cease work on the game.

Fortunately, Paradox's involvement with the game never went beyond scrapping Atlus' original GUI and replacing it with their own. Atlus will have a patch for Impassable Tourist Bus of Doom available soon, but the Race to the Moon fix and the anticipated GUI overhaul will indeed have to wait until Christmas at the earliest.

Exactly what's wrong with my alternate solution to Tourist Bus of Doom? It's asinine, but that doesn't mean it's not working right.

You can get a lot of fun results by reverse-pickpocketing things onto NPCs. Grenades, for example, especially with guys who have shit for Throwing skill but who're very, very hotheaded.

It's not the execution that's wrong, it's the aftermath. Atlus' developers were clearly able to foresee that people would try to solve Impassable Tourist Bus of Doom by reverse-pickpocketing explosives and blowing up the bus, but they were still in the process of scripting the aftermath when Square told them to bugger off.

From what Atlus has disclosed, the developers intended for the nation-wide state of anarchy to last for only a few days before Zombie Ferdinand Marcos rises from his grave, eats the brains of the current president, and declares martial law. With Zombie Marcos in power, the amount of heat you gain from Filipino cops when they catch you, the amount of money you need to bribe them, the prices of weapons and other goods obtained from the Filipino Crazies, and the spawn rates of the Filipino Communist and Moro Militant enemy types would have doubled. The rise of Zombie Marcos would have also unlocked a series of quests to decide the final fate of the Philippines; you could either side with Zombie Marcos, the Communists, the Moros, or one of several other people (Zombie Ninoy Aquino, Zombie Tomoyuki Yamashita, and Zombie Douglas MacArthur, to name a few), who all give out their own individualized quests. Atlus was in the process of implementing Zombie Marcos when Square took over; Square's programmers were too inept to implement Zombie Marcos on their own and simply dummied him out, thus leaving the Philippines in a state of permanent anarchy, wonky police relations, and inflated gun costs after the bus explodes.

As mentioned before, Atlus will be reimplementing Zombie Marcos and his quests with the latest patch. I pity Atlus, having to fix all the messes that Square and its other collaborators made just so they could get the game out for the holiday season...

[MKSheppard]

The "Supercar" quest can be completed very cheaply, without the need to acquire a McLaren F1 or Veynron.

If you have Stuart in your party, he'll complete the supercar quest for you for the price of a couple dozen gallons of hi octane gasoline and a brake pad replacement or two for his corvette.

[Mayabird]

Are there still those massive telephone book-sized strategy guides for sale anywhere? I've been looking for them in bookstores, used bookstores, and online and I can't find them anywhere. I didn't get one when they were in stores and I rather regret it. Annoying having to click through various GameFAQS walkthroughs and hard to bookmark the exact thing I need.

For instance, in this most recent playthrough I'm doing, I just found an item in my inventory that I think might be another super-rare, but I have no idea where it came from: the Righteous Shiv of Shanking (no, I haven't reached the Arizona Prison level yet). It's a pretty decent Small Stabby Implement-type weapon, not usually my syle, but it does instant KOs to Dumbasses who quote themselves in their own sigs and 3x damage to Self-Righteous Whiny Idiots Without a Clue. Really useful in a few places, and using it with the 'STFU' combo attack cracks me up every time. Just wish I knew where I could get another one.

[Ford Prefect]

Are there still those massive telephone book-sized strategy guides for sale anywhere? I've been looking for them in bookstores, used bookstores, and online and I can't find them anywhere. I didn't get one when they were in stores and I rather regret it. Annoying having to click through various GameFAQS walkthroughs and hard to bookmark the exact thing I need.

You mean SDN Ultimania? I managed to find a copy of volume 2 in Japanese on eBay, but I doubt I'll ever get volume 1 in any language. I wish they'd put it back into print, but the copyright is seriously screwed on this game and related materials.

[The Yosemite Bear]

With Trebidation I hear 2k games has announced SDN-forumshock, and Creative is talking about "SDN-Total Flame War" titles, is this as scary as it sounds?

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

With Trebidation I hear 2k games has announced SDN-forumshock, and Creative is talking about "SDN-Total Flame War" titles, is this as scary as it sounds?

Nowhere near as scary as it could be, because both claims have since been proven to be false. However, Namco Bandai has recently announced that the Project Aces team will be working on an SDN World flight sim, while Infinity Ward and EA Digital Illusions CE are currently bidding on the rights to the SDN World FPS.

[Eulogy]

I have a couple questions for you all:

1. Is there a better way to conserve Awesome Points, or cut its usage? My party is heavy on the magic and Flashy Stuff and I'm running out of Chuck Norris Beard Hairs and Ninja Turtle Comic Books.

2. Where is the Thinking Cap, exactly? I've looked in some of the more likely spots, but I still don't have it.

3. Where can I obtain more Knowledge element attacks and weapons? A lot of friendly NPCs absorb the Knowledge element and I can force weakness to it via the Selective Amnesia status (which is why it's so useful), but so far I have no Knowledge weapons and like two moves with said element.

4. During the Demons, LOL segment, does my game end if my main character gets turned into a demon? And can I still have party members in my party and do stuff with them even if they're Western Demons, Speed Demons, Socialism Boogeymen or arguably the worst of all, Animu Demons? I don't want a Game Over because a needed NPC suddenly has a tail, wings, red glowing eyes, the daaaaaaaarkness element added to him, and his voice is in G Major.