This seems like a rather consequential choice to make, whether to help her or warn the Arbiter. Is it? What are the practical effects of going one way vs the other, and do you guys usually pick the same path every game? I'm going to do both just to see the story but I'm wondering what gear/equipment you unlock vs lock out of the game based on the path you take and future effects on the world.
#Silvaine von Sha's vignette (spoilers almost certainly within)
visual thistle
crimson trellis
I think if you pick to help Silvaine von sha, you'll get an extra weapon out of it:
init damage acc pierce parry source
Lionclaw Karat 8 45 - 76 8 32% 6 Vignette, Level 11
(I think that's the one, but I am not certain)
obsidian atlas
Yeah and a real hot mess of a faction war basically. Perfect for making money and enemies and maybe some special ship upgrades.
Consolidation also adds in an extra "type" of faction you meet in space The coalition. But they're not much of a problem
crimson trellis
I thought that might be the case... supporting the arbiter is the route I went with this run and I feel like I haven't seen that faction out flying ships before but thought maybe I just hadn't noticed before.
visual thistle
how does an offhand blade work? I don't think I've seen one of them
jade nimbus
Equipping it does require at least 1 Blades skill
crimson trellis
one benefit is pistol users can get some weapon parry for melee defense.
jade nimbus
True. Defender's Kukri is best for that, with the highest parry. It's not something to count on since sword opponents' dice pools will outpace it, but if you can there's no reason not to.
visual thistle
hahaha holy shit. My bullshit radar went off when I started talking to this contact
I just recovered the cube
now I can't turn the radar off it's just blaring and flashing and
visual thistle
so that's a little weird - Trike died on the planet. But he's still listed as a prisoner in my manifest, I can't replace the prison cell with a passenger room
visual thistle
yeah pretty sure that's a bug, it didn't clear until I handed in the data cube
mental elbow
offhands are often worth considering on bodyguards even if you don't really train the pistols up much. knockback attacks shift enemy position even on misses. Meanwhile, the Bodyguard class's Bodyshot & Screening Fire skills knock back and target position 3. Allows you to yank enemy snipers & HMG wielders out of the last row with absolute certainty. That's handy during the ugly duckling years when your team may not be ready to just 1 round entire human squads yet. That your bodyguard officer may technically be awful with his gun because he didn't take other pistol classes and only splashed 5 levels for Honor Guard barely even enters into it. Plus, you don't even really need skill ranks for using a good pistol to burn down the non-evasion classes like Combat Medics, Zealots, Spies or poor schlub shiphands that happened to get in the way of your boarding crew. It's not enough to always make Pistols & Offhands strictly better or anything but the Lionclaw more or less has decent long blade stats anyway, so worth considering.
visual thistle
can you offhand the pistol?
Because once I got the fancy family legacy blade especially he was doing pretty consistently good damage with it
crimson trellis
the pistol always goes in the primary weapon slot, but I don't think there would be any stat difference if they let you swap them. There's no reason you cannot use the blade for attacks. My assassin was using blade/pistol combo for a bit because it granted slightly better parry and the damage difference at the time was marginal. For that setup I wasn't attacking with the pistol, so I equipped the contact level 6 pistol, which has +2 parry on it.
visual thistle
One thing I'm super super happy with is my cc composition overall:
- Bodyguard 5, Wing Commando 5-8, Swordsman x
- Exo-Scout 1, Commander 8, Shock Trooper x
- Military Officer 5, Combat Medic, Saboteur - I'm going to pump more ranks into CM this time than just the 8 for lifeline, dunno how many. But this guy hasn't been contributing much damage anyway
- Bounty Hunter 5, Soldier 5, Xeno Hunter x
hrm, I'll try that out this time once I've got some ranks in BG. Didn't realize you could offhand sword without maluses to it
the titan shell from the shock trooper is just hilarious vs humans
crimson trellis
If you go full medic, you can put them in the back row where they take fewer attacks. You could pick up 5 points in bounty hunter for Unfaltering Ire, or put a point into spy for the stealth attack which works at range 4.
visual thistle
as is plasma burner from xeno. I wasn't even worrying about the init penalty in human battles
I thought about splashing spy instead but I don't want to give up either of MO or Sab
Sab for boarding, Ithink I ended up taking MO to 8 for Steely Authority (I had a couple battles where my morale just fell through the floor)
and MO has a few talents at 5 that I very like
crimson trellis
you mentioned putting more points into combat medic, so my suggestion was based on the idea of going all in on combat medic, which is what my current medic on my run is doing (not something I remember doing recently) having all that doctor skill does make a difference. They have 25 doctor so flatline restores 35 morale to the team. Normally, when I go 8 levels into CM, the 18 from flatline feels on the weaker side, but now it feels quite potent.
the downside is, when nobody needs healing they just kind of sit there.
visual thistle
Does BH/Xeno/Soldier lose anything from not being in slot 4? I'm checking now.
I'd be fine with going CM as the primary for that officer but the talents from Sab/MO I felt dovetailed really nicely with CM, not a ton of damage but lots of combat utility and boarding shenanigans
crimson trellis
just to be clear, I am not saying you should change what you're doing. I was just offering an alternative to consider. Sab and MO definitely have some nice utility.
visual thistle
yeah no I appreciate it, it's constructive
I tend to think myself into boxes (like the other day when I gave up after days of frustration and tried heavy armor and CC suddenly became easy mode)
crisp narwhal
I believe 3 types of ship component unlock depending if you push coalition(support arbiter) or dissension(depose arbiter) and if you back syndicates or clans during dissension. I'm not exactly sure which gear is from where though.
crimson trellis
Regarding the original question, the one about the difference between helping Silvaine Von Sha vs the Arbiter, I am noticing some storyline differences in events that come later. Not going to say anything specific because I don't want to spoil anything for anyone.
jade nimbus
I believe 3 types of ship component unlock depending if you push coalition(suppo...
Dissension with Thulun in charge unlocks Targeting Matrix 5. Of course, Targetlock Matrix from Spirit of Cadonya is arguably even better.
shut mantle
There's three possible outcomes to this storyline.
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||Helping Silvaine and kicking the arbiter out. Getting a lioncrat (off-hand blade).||
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||Helping the arbiter will have sector wide changes like having the coalition patrols (space police xD)||
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||Speaking to Silvaine about the mission and basically do nothing and wait for a couple of turns and you will meet one of the templars from templar battleforce game "Nyra Ridaan". She will force the arbiter to step down from her position.||
strong zephyr
Fun fact about the space police is that when conscripted, they start with no traits. So you can slowly get them to have all the good Orbital traits. But of course, conscripts have crappy attributes.