Aliens: Dark Descent

Best Perks

Сrеdit gоеs to MOK !

I been thinking about this as I’ve went, and definitely have a prelim set of ideas about it. But when I look at some of the numbers in the characters sheet, and catalogue the mechanical unknowns, it all looks very fuzzy.

For example, I got a handful of new recruits, level 1. I look at their stats, and their accuracy is listed as 50%. But meanwhile, I swap over the my A-team and B-teams stats, and their numbers are all lower. As low as 30% for the guy with poor vision. But nearly all of them have the sharpshooter buff and/or the targetting kit, and no visible debuffs, so theres no visible reason for why their accuracy shouldn’t be higher than a recruit, let alone lower.

So either A) the number is misreported, and doesn’t actually reflect their accuracy, or B) the kit and buffs are straight broke and make your squad worse. In both cases, I cannot tell to what degree a character is affected by a 5% accuracy bonus, nor what difference it makes in practice. Surely this is bugged, either way.

In this context, we’re left with a lot of uncertainty overall about what’s effective, and by how much, and when it’s effective versus inactive. And one presumes there’s other bugs we’re not even noticing since(as far as I know) we can’t get much glimpse of the numbers crunching under the hood.

All that being said, my initial impressions is that offensive perks are the most valuable since offense is 90% of your defense. This is an attrition game, so the goal isn’t to reduce the pain of getting hit; the goal is to avoid getting hit at all. Spending resources to kill more, to make more bullets count, to crowd control, that’s your best way to stay alive.

Armor and HP? That’s like minimum car insurance, it doesn’t help you avoid getting in a car wreck.

I also tend to think firepower, accuracy, and crowd control are also better investments than stress buffs, since effective offense helps you mitigate stress increases.

That being said, stress mitigators like bravery are basically ‘always on,’ so they seem pretty efficient. They also help you avoid the stress debuffs, which tank your accuracy and other stats. Side by side, buffs to accuracy and offense are smaller than the debuffs that come from stress. And finally, stress debuffs create a feedback loop: Lower accuracy means getting hit, which increases stress, which lowers accuracy(etc). So the big trick is to avoid that first debuff to your offense.

So in the end, I figure:

1) Anything that helps keep your offense high and strong, or apply some crowd control, is the best investment.
2) Things that help your defense are far less applicable, efficient and aren’t significantly impactful. A point of armor is gone when your next runner explodes next to the squad.

They don’t help prevent the stress negative feedback loop either. Not a fan of armor/hp or other limited defense.

3) Some stress perks like Mind of Steel that don’t operate on the battle field are pretty good, but at the same time it doesn’t fight the stress feedback loop. I like it a lot, but if I get stuck in a choice between that & bravery, I’ll take bravery.

With regard to the OP’s highlights, IMO, Redemption isn’t worth it except in very few circumstances, such as things that grow the stress feedback loop or hits your accuracy.

Smart Ass seems pretty attractive because so far, I’ve had trouble leveraging the tech’s drone at all. The fact that drone functions are buried in a sub-menu is very bad for quick and decisive action. Drone could be great for crowd control, but the UI for it needs to be fixed.