Pangaea666: Could you expand a little more on what is inaccurate and leading to the wrong directions in the video?
What you write makes sense, and I think I've done that to some degree. Even wrote bios for all four characters, because I wanted to roleplay in this game, more than I usually do. I've no idea what people can be picked up though. Obviously I took Angie right away, and I've heard about Rose while reading a little, but other than that I've no idea who or when. Do future NPCs have any particular strengths that I don't need covered in the starting four characters?
What he says makes a lot of sense, in many ways. I read a lot of build advice and eventually for my first complete run through the game, I bucked conventional wisdom and went with 3 Rangers that had 8 INT and one that had 10. Many people will tell you that 8 INT is a 'waste' since you only need to add 2 more points to get to 10 and thus have another skill point per level. I love skills though, and I found my Rangers worked out brilliantly. I was playing on Ranger difficulty. Having said that, I will say that any advice to have high Combat Initiative is pretty solid (I haven't watched the video, so don't know what it recommends). If you act first - and possibly more than once - before the enemy acts, it makes battles go a whole lot better.
As for the skills that NPCs bring to the table, since skills from one character to another don't stack (ie. if one character has 4 ranks and another 2 in a particular skill, they don't pool together to give 6 effective ranks in the party: only the highest counts), then yes, you don't need to cover their strong areas.
One thing I can recommend is don't necessarily spend all your skill points as you earn them. Just hang onto them and when you start getting to, for example, locks that are consistently rated Hard or Medium, then drop another rank or two in the skill to make them easier.
Pangaea666: I've tried to cover a lot of bases, but already notice that it would be useful to have computer science and mechanical repair, and since Angie has Hard Ass it was unnecessary to pick that for the main character. I also don't have Leadership on him. So far Angie has gone her own way 3-4 times in battle, but it's been fine so far really. Angie also has Weaponsmithing, so I could perhaps have gone without that too from the start.
I found Leadership to be quite useful. If you can stop your NPCs from going Rogue, you'll probably be a whole lot happier. They sometimes are fine when they go Rogue, but more often than not IMO they just cause a whole lot of trouble when they do.
Pangaea666: Perhaps I've min-maxed some of the attributes on the characters too much, but the first guy aside (max charisma and intelligence), the others look more balanced. I wanted a 'leader', a tough mo-fo up close (tank, sort of), a sniper and a tech person. Then I've tried to include as many useful skills as I could. Have also covered several weapons, though with Angie, we have two Assault Riflers.
Min/maxing is pretty much forced on you if you want to have a Ranger with at least one high attribute, since you just don't get a whole lot of attribute points to work with. But you can 'minimize' it to a certain degree (pun intended). Full disclosure though: I'm an incorrigible min/maxer, so take what I say with regards to this with a large bag of salt.
The unfortunate fact of this game is that Assault Rifles are king. Better than anything else in the game. That's not to say other weapons aren't effective as well, but they're generally so far behind Assault Rifles that it really makes you wonder why you'd take anything else. My current team has 5 members with ARs, one sniper, and an Energy Weapon user. I find no need to have any melee presence whatsoever, as it's simple enough to just move your Ranger out of the pressured state when an enemy moves in close and then blast them with your rifle. Ammo has not been an issue at all with this set-up.
Pangaea666: The Action Points on the Sniper/Medic is a little uncomfortable though (11). She can fire once, but will usually have several AP that I can't do anything useful with. I've gone into this game almost blind, though, so maybe I'll have to do what you did, and play up to the Ag Center a few times and simply find out what I like most in terms of skills, attributes and weapons.
Keep in mind that if you save 1 or 2 action points (end turn), you get an extra one next turn. If you save 3 or more, you get 2 extra APs next turn. This can result in being able to fire one or two more times on the next turn. As well, your medic may need to move in to heal someone during combat, so having enough points to do that is important.
Playing a bit into the game with a few parties is an excellent idea. I went through about 1/2 of Arizona with 4 different parties before finally figuring out how I wanted to build my Rangers and finishing the game with them. Then, after finishing, I ended up tweaking yet again. I quite liked my first finishing group, but I
really like my current one.
Pangaea666: Is there a way to Pause the game without bringing up the menu? One time the tank went down because due to bleeding because I didn't manage to start healing him quickly enough (getting used to the UI and so forth). Would be excellent if I could then pause the game so time stopped but I could still carry out the healing act.
Nope, no way to pause other than the menu/ESC key. At least not that I've found.
You asked if both a Medic and a Surgeon are useful/recommended. The answer is 'yes'. Medics only heal (and you'll find a lot of healing kits, while Surgeons are the only ones that can get rid of status effects (bleeding, etc). As well, without spoiling anything, you can use your surgeon to heal a lot of NPCs in the game (if you find any lying on hospital beds, try using the surgeon skill on them and see what happens. :) )
My current party has 2 field medics and a surgeon. Works great. I'll post my party up to give you an idea how I went. Bottom line though, is Drealmer7 is right: build your party how you want and enjoy it. As long as you have enough knowledge to at least be able to cover combat, you're golden. I find this game is a helluva lot of fun and there's a lot of room for replaying in a different way. So go with a party you like now, then switch it up for your next run.
