The strength characteristic.

Question

Hello, a question about the nature of the strength characteristic.

The description of the strength characteristic reads: "Strength is used to determine the power of a melee attack. The stronger the attack, the higher the chance to cause critical damage when striking your opponent."

As far as I can tell, Strength is only ever used in the combat situation, where having a strength of 4+ grants an increasing bonus to the combat situation, which can ignore armor when this enhancement surpasses the maximum age bonus. And having a Strength of 1 grants a CS bonus to the squad attacked.

I feel as though I'm missing something. Is the only benefit to increasing strength the CS enhancements for having a strength of 4 or higher? Granted the CS bonus is great, but that'd mean there's no bonus from going from 2 strength to 3 other than getting closer to 4 strength. Which seems to make the two-handed upgrade for melee weapons rather pointless on 2 strength units, among other +1 strength enhancement 1 upgrades. Is there any other bonus for increasing strength beyond the CS bonus, or for taking +1 strength weapons on 2 strength units. Or is that the intention?

natfka · Accepted Answer

Yes to get a bonus to the Combat Situation you would need to be Strength 4. This was done on intentionally as strength is often a cheaper stat to get increases from. There is also a penalty for having a strength of 1. A strength of at least 3 is needed to take advantage of two handed weapons and strength is often the primary way we have seen players gain the advantage in the combat situation in order to get Critical Hits.

In the great scheme of things 2-3 is considered a normal strength and if you take strength higher even higher than the maximum age bonus it allows you to smash through armor.

You are correct though that out of all the characteristics going between Strength 2 to strength 3 is the only location of characteristics that has no direct impact on immediate gameplay, unless you get yourself to a Str 3 so that some squads can gain the bonus from the 2-handed upgrade.

Back in the earlier days there was a balance between the domains that was structured to give domains like the Reptilia and many of the Biests a solid advantage in strength. It came down to a balance that was many many ridiculous hours of working numbers, balancing, and figuring in the all three ages of gameplay.

In games models with a 5, 6, or even 7 strength are always maximizing that Combat Situation. It can be very powerful

Sky Drift · Answer

Ah, thank you again for the good reply.

I guess I initially assumed that giving a unit of strength 2 dudes two-handers would supplement their strength in a way, like piercing or some such. But realized through gameplay that you'd need to pump a little extra strength into them for that, unless I was missing something. Thank you again for the clarification my friend.