AP: troubles with gadgets, skills, hacking etc

[eor123]

I'm having a great deal of trouble with the deactivate / hack / lock pick sequences. My brain just doesn't seem to w@&k fast enough to solve those in the alloted time.  I dropped from Normal Difficulty to Easy hoping I would have more time, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Pretty much a game killer for me, unfortunately.

[PZ]

uh-oh - doesn't sound good - I really don't like the timed events that much.

[eor123]

I haven't given up on it yet. Realized that if you make a mistake, the timer for those tasks accelerates. If I slow down and make certain I am correct before acting, I usually have long enough to complete it. But I sure would enjoy the game more without such tasks.

Navigating through the skills, gadgets, and weapons is overly complicated in my view.   

I prefer more straight forward gameplay, but it is an RPG and that seems to be a characteristic of those type games.

[Art Blade]

If you read back in the ALPHA Protocol topic, you'll see that about the first impression I had and mentioned was how I hated hacking computers during the tutorial ;D It is only the tutorial that will nearly kill you or make you throw the monitor through the window. It won't ever be that bad again if you take precautions.

Which brings us to skills/abilities. Invest AP ("Ability Points") in the SABOTAGE skill, that will extend the time for hacking and make it easier at the time (longer passwords which can be spotted more easily than small ones). It will affect lock picking, hacking computers and disabling alarm panels.

Or, and this brings us to gadgets, use EMPs as soon and as often as possible. When you bought those and equipped yourself with them, you may use them to instantly solve those technical problems mentioned in the last paragraph. If you have them equipped and stand in front of, say, a computer, you'll see that there's an option for you to either hack or use an EMP.

Or, and this is about armoured suit upgrades, get (find/buy) upgrades such as those gloves that make hacking easier when equipped.

Of course you can combine the sabotage ability with armour suit upgrades.. :)


***

You said that navigating through skills, gadgets and weapons is overly complicated. I don't know about the console version, but at least the menus should look the same and basically w@&k the same. I agree that it is not exactly the optimal solution we're presented with, but it follows a certain rule:

While selecting any skill/gadget/weapon and ammo type, the game is paused. So no need to rush there. Select whatever you want, in peace and quiet, and then.. the game will resume. Now you can use whatever you selected.  :)

What I do:

After some experience I now select skills (like invisibility) and gadgets (like shock traps) as well as my weapon and ammo of choice (plus I change certain upgrades of my armoured suit) right at the beginning of a mission so I will have them ready and only if the situation changes I make changes to my loadout.

Hope that helps :)

[Art Blade]

PZ: Timed events are rare, it's not like races in AC2. Of those sort of timed events you'll only see one during the Museum mission, you need to deactivate a bomb in a certain amount of time. That's it.

The timed events Eeyore is talking about are mini games, and as described previously, you can slow time down or skip the mini game entirely (EMPs)  ;D

[eor123]

I wondered if the sabotage skills upgrade might effect the deactivation and hacking processes.

[Art Blade]

yes :)