Q. about Tactics Mod

fncruz

I am doing another BG2 run. I have always used SCS but this time will use Tactics MOD.

Does the difficulty bar change anything on Tactics Mod???

gorgonzola

No

tedmann12

Is tactics mod still supported? If so can you link me? Used to play with it AGES ago, kinda curious to see how its diff from SCS

Lord_Tansheron

It depends on which version of which mod you're comparing of course, but IIRC Tactics used to be more liberal with how it achieved its goals, including giving enemies advantages outside of usual game mechanics - something SCS aims to avoid whenever possible. But there's also a lot of places where Tactics did play fair, and SCS has adapted some Tactics content as well (like the "Tactics remix" version of de'Arnise Keep).

Tactics also had a number of extra encounters, like e.g. a Lich in the Docks, a Gnomish fighter/illusionist also in the Docks, Kuroisan, the infamous kensai/mage, and the "Red Badge" poison-themed encounter (and many others). Several of these include new items as well, some of them very powerful. In that it goes a lot further than SCS in terms of extra content.

The original Tactics also included two new kits, an Archer kit for fighter (functionally identical to the ranger kit, but free of alignment concerns) and an Anti-Paladin kit for fighter, which was a ridiculously overpowered piece of cheese (with things like innate dispel on melee hit). I don't know if the new versions still come with those, and if they do, if they are the same as they used to be (especially given we now have a "real" anti-paladin in the base game).

gorgonzola

Lord_Tansheron wrote: »

Tactics used to be more liberal with how it achieved its goals, including giving enemies advantages outside of usual game mechanics - something SCS aims to avoid whenever possible.

yes, some enemies had innate abilities that they should not have and there is a very liberal use of forced spells in the coding so many spells can not be disrupted in the usual way, even if the mage takes elemental damage while is casting the spell pops out.

@tedmann12 tactics is not fully released in EE, but there is a playable alpha version.
take a look here
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/41242/tactics-mod-bg2ee-compatibility-conversion-and-beta-test
sadly it seems that as now the focus is all on scs is unlikely that it will progress further.

i have the original, not EE, game installed and i play it to experience tactics mod and other mods, like the soulafiein npc, that have never been ported to EE, but it is possible to play it in EE.
and i suggest to every player that never tried it to play it at least one time, it is old school but really fun and somehow very challenging, at least at the beginning of the game when you still lack of items and levels and you have to face some enemies much stronger then the usual goblins or ilich's durgars.


when i started to play it, right from my vanilla experience, it was really frustrating (wtf??? it is impossible!!! it is not fair!!! how a player is supposed to win without using cheese???), some of the battles took my so many reloads as i did not follow other people's recipes i found online and refused to resort to cheese, but to finally find my way to beat them was the most satisfying thing in my whole BG experience.
i learned much more about how to play the game in my first couple of runs with tactics then in the 4 of five years that i played the vanilla game before (living in a digital divide area i had access to the net way after a friend gave me as present the game cds that he was not using any more).

tedmann12

hmm, would love to play tactics on top of an scs install. Mainly just for the extra encounters. Any idea how well this works?

gorgonzola

with the old not ee game it was possible and it has been done, but nowadays scs has changed a lot, so i am not sure that it still works.
anyway as both scs and tactics allow to select which components to install i suppose that you can give it a try, maybe loading only the extra encounters. probably it is better to load first scs then the tactics encounters so the tactics ai is not overwritten by scs.
ie the lich in the docks is a FM that cast BBOD then attacks you mlee, it would be a shame if scs would overwrite his original scripts.
also tactics, or better some parts of it, as i told before in the thread, relies on forced by script casting and such things.
the extra encounters are fun, but also the starting dungeon and the last battle with irenicus are something that you should experience, are both very different from the vanilla ones and probably 10x more difficult.
if you want i can drop a couple of spoilers about them...

i hope that some one more competent then me in mod compatibility (my level of competence is 0 ) can tell you more.
if not make a backup of your game and give it a try...
or if it does not work give a try at tactics only, on insane it is hard enough to challenge an experienced player and is fun even if so old school.
for a super challenging run you can play tactics in LOB mode, given how it is hard on insane i don't even know if it is possible to play it on LOB.

tedmann12

Reading through the thread of the alpha version, looks like it works on top of scs for the most part, just needs to be installed after. Going to give it a try soon, once I finish my current BG:EE > SoD game, gonna important an overpowered cleric/mage into BG2, cant wait!