Sleuth Home - Message Boards - Newbie Questions

Nov-7-2005 03:44

Is the number of questions you can ask before a suspect or people in town clams up again purely random?

Nov-7-2005 20:10

Charming and tough skills vary in their effectiveness according to the level of your skill, your gear, and which method your interviewee is more likely to respond well too. If you get the judge of character skill, you can see the numbers laid out for you, but in general, most of us who have been around a while tend to agree that it is best to focus on tough OR charming, along with smarts, until you have built your character up a good bit, then add whichever of the two (charming or tough) you're missing. This makes the judge of character skill unnecessary until your agent has a choice about whether to use tough or charming skills with a particular person.

In case that didn't answer your questions directly enough:

Smart skills have no bearing on the interviewing, and you have to choose between a tough approach and a charming approach each time. They aren't equal, and you are the one who chooses your approach. You will only know which one is higher for sure by getting the judge of character skill, and this is not what I recommend at this point in your character's development.

Good luck!

Nov-8-2005 00:22

Actually to be more specific, the question I was asking is somewhat related to that but not exactly.

I know that the Charm and Toughness Bonuses from equipment are helpful in terms of the chance of success with the Intimidate/Interrogate and Sweet Talking/Rule Bending actions respectively.

What I want to know though is what determines or effects the number of questions you can ask a suspect or townsperson before the clam up again. Which was answer by An Zo, albeit vaguely, not that I'm complaining but I'm curious regarding the magnitude of the effects of the Charm/Toughness bonus to the number of questions you can ask after you unclam a suspect.

Is it huge? Like a bonus of 10 can lead to a significant chance of getting an extra question or two as opposed to having no bonus at all? Or is it minor?

A more technical way of stating my question would be...

Given the Situation :

-Person Clams up
-Detective uses Unclamming Skill
-Person Unclams
-Person can now be asked X more questions.

What are the factors for the variable X? And how effective are each of these factors in determining the value of X?

Nov-8-2005 04:08

if you use "tough" detective skills, such as interrogation and intimidation then X is determined by what skills your detective has in these areas - for more detailed info about various skills look in the help bar under skills. The same is obviously true for a charm detectives' "bend the rules" and "sweet talk" skills.

You can further enhance your chances by wearing tough or charm gear(up to +23 I think).

This seriously improves your chances of getting more X.

Another factor affecting x is the fear/pliability factor of the suspect/townie. This is variable from case to case as well as from difficulty level to difficulty level.

To a certain degree I think there is also a random factor which means that you are not always certain of success.

To sum up. The main thing affecting x is skill. If you don't have the skill, you can't use it.

the second most important thing is the level of difficulty.

To counter the level of difficulty it is essential to have a combination of high skills and high level clothing.

er...

thats it

Nov-8-2005 04:20

Much thanks.

One more question, although unrelated to the topic. By help bar do you mean the link "http://newyork.hypoware.com/help/index.html"?

Or is there another help file? Because that one, while helpful, only gives rather, uh, basic and not indepth information about how each skill works.

Nov-8-2005 07:10

Yes, that is the help bar. What indepth information do you require more?

Nov-8-2005 09:20

I think the thing here is that you are going to have to do your own research on the "X factor" as you play. I am not sure anyone else has tracked it in the detail you are asking for, and if they have, they might not want to share it. We tend to tell everyone almost everything about the game, maybe sometimes making it less fun because we do so, out of a desire to be helpful. In this case, I think the best way for you to get the indepth information you desire is through playing. Even if you invest in a skill or gear and later wish you'd made a different choice, it's not the end of the world. The last thing I'll add is that if you don't have stress detection, you might want it, as it lets you know when people are going to clam up.

Nov-8-2005 10:27

Granted, there are people who prefer the inner mechanisms of games to remain hidden to them. However that's not the case with me.

The less I know about how a game's gears moves the less interested I am in it [in time]

I'd love to take this game apart before my interest wanes, but the only way to do that right now is by performing something highly illegal. There are no game guides with formulas, no character simulators to test things out on. A significant amount of the important numbers are hidden, even with the Judge of Character skill.

So my only recourse is to rely on experienced players and whatever observations they've garnered on their own or passed down from even older players. After all, I've seen people list down the exact numerical effects of some skills.

The purpose of my question was to see if I should start mapping my character's secondary focus in terms of gear, if it should be on Smarts or Toughness.

At face value, Smarts seemed to have the upper hand as Toughness apparently only did one thing and Charm pretty much filled that role. Having more accurate PE would save more questions than having another option when unclamming PE Townspeople. So what if Interrogation worked, it'll only get me probably give me a totally random number of questions on evidence that might not even belong to the killer.

But this extra tidbit of the Charm/Toughness bonuses lent weight to considering Toughness as my secondary focus, now that I have an idea, albeit rough, that Charm and Toughness actually help in getting more questions, better PE might actually be not as an investment at the better chance at getting extra shots at WE [and PE as well] and an equally better chance at getting a good number of these "extra shots"

Of course a reply to this would be that instead of asking the help of people who could provide me the information, I do my own tests, but I doubt I'll turn up enough information before I lose interest in pursuing the matter any further.

Nov-8-2005 10:46

*that Charm and Toughness actually help in getting more questions,*

that Charm and Toughness also help in increasing the number of questions you get from their respective conversation skills.

Nov-8-2005 11:07

Take smarts as your secondary tool.

Obviously once you have more skill points you can then choose a second persuasion type. Then once you can judge character, you can use whichever method is more likely to bring success.

Theres too much randomness in the gsmr to give anything other than rough guidelines, it seems to me that the models simplistic - theres not all that much to take to pieces. If I were you I'd get an awful lot more excited about the rules behind autocad or something.

Nov-8-2005 11:16

Excited isn't exactly the term for it, it's just how I normally play PC/console games. Or anything with RPG elements in it.