The Precinct Update & Make It Count DLC: Comments & Questions Thread

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LukeBRG

Romero Games
Dec 11, 2020
1.156
123
Hey Gangsters!

We hope you are as excited as we are about the updates! As you are busy getting the lay of the land with The Precinct update and Make It Count DLC, we thought we’d open a thread for any questions or comments that you may have as you are playing through the new features. Please post anything Precinct or Make It Count related in the comments below and share your thoughts with us.

To get the conversation started, here are a few nuggets of information to share that could be useful on your path to the top. Gather ’round crew, we’ll make this quick!

Supply Lines
As we’ve covered before, you set up a Supply Line as soon as you occupy two adjoining Precincts. Supply Lines are essential to your empire as they provide a path for supplies and alcohol to reach all parts of your empire, while also ensuring your money has a safe path back to you. But, say you buy out another Faction in a distant neighborhood and acquire their Precincts. How do you keep them afloat when they are not connected to your main Supply Line? Well, alcohol is a global resource so it is always able to move between Safehouses in different neighborhoods. Supply Lines are neighborhood-wide, so once you have a Safehouse in a neighborhood, your Precincts in that neighborhood can be supplied. As long as the Supply Line within each neighborhood remains unbroken, your Precincts don’t have to worry about running dry. Something to keep in mind as you explore the new features: Safehouses are key components to any neighborhood that you operate in.

Alcohol Consumption
As you upgrade your rackets, there will be a demand for more alcohol. Each upgrade increases the maximum number of customers you can house in your establishments, and each one of those extra customers will be thirsty! As your rackets grow, so does consumption of your product, so be sure to keep a close eye on your whole empire, not just the rackets you upgrade. In Chicago’s economy, each upgrade has a knock-on effect for other parts of your empire. Production needs to keep pace with the growth of your empire, so as you upgrade your rackets, monitor your breweries too. As more alcohol is consumed, you have to make sure you have the potential to produce more booze as it’s needed and, eventually, that means upgrading your breweries’ output, too, to match that demand and keep the engine running.

Sometimes, your alcohol may appear as 0 in the inventory. This usually just means that your customers can’t get through your product fast enough and your rackets have been stocked as fast as booze is being produced. For instance, if your brewery produces 12 barrels of rack a week and your rackets consume 12 barrels per week, then the number will appear as 0 because you have none in the store. This information is outlined in the alcohol tool-tip which helps you keep on top of the distribution in your Empire, so you know exactly where your alcohol is going.

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One last thing…
You may have some questions about the number of Gangsters on the war screen. At a glance, it can appear at times that you are severely outnumbered by AI gangster availability.

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Don’t be alarmed, this number accounts for the total number of AI squads expressed as singular gangsters. So, If the AI boss has 5 squads and if each of these had 3 gangsters in it then the AI boss will have 15 gangsters at their disposal. On your side, the number represents the total number of Black Book Gangsters you have hired along with your Boss.

Hopefully, this helps to clarify a few things while you’re building your new empire. You never know when this information could come in handy. Looking forward to reading your comments below!

Let’s be having ’em, crew!
 
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Great add on! Like the new boss. But there's a problem with attacking rackets with other precincts (minor factions or derelicts) not in my city. I can declare war with minor factions but it won't let me attack the rackets directly. It kind of wet blankets the experience especially if I want to war expand to another precinct and opens options for me to start somewhere else (build my assets on a particular location or strip). Also the game has lost the ability to sell assets. Can you please fix these aspects of the game as it was what made the game enjoyable for me and most likely many others? I'm on Xbox and PC (99% of the time on Xbox, so yeah avid EOS fan & UX design head here).
 
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Look, I like new content, but Empire of Sin felt really lacking and charging $15 for more content is not a good look imo. I get it. It's what Paradox does to all games they publish now despite how annoying its gotten in games like EUIV, however, that being said I'm probably going to wait for a sale to jump back in again, even though I think the precinct update was much needed to actually feel like you control something, rather than a game being a massive free for all of racket spam.
 
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The free Precinct Update brings the game to where it needs to be, in my opinion. There are definitely some things I would like to see, but the game feel great now.

The paid DLC is fun as well and adds enough to the game to warrant the price tag (again, imo).

If you were on the fence, it's worth jumping in.

The other thing I hope people consider is re-reviewing the game on Steam based on the updated version, which - again - I feel towers above the state of the game when it launched. The developers obviously cared about making it better, and I believe they did exactly that.
 
Look, I like new content, but Empire of Sin felt really lacking and charging $15 for more content is not a good look imo. I get it. It's what Paradox does to all games they publish now despite how annoying its gotten in games like EUIV, however, that being said I'm probably going to wait for a sale to jump back in again, even though I think the precinct update was much needed to actually feel like you control something, rather than a game being a massive free for all of racket spam.

Just want to clarify that the precinct update is free. The paid DLC is adding a new boss and the fixer into the game.
 
I don't know if this is a bug or if this is a new "feature", but all the weapons seems useless when used at low range.
I'll explain myself... Before the update - and the DLC - weapons like a rifle would give at least 50% hit chance when used 5-6 tiles away with something like 75 marksmanship and enemy in half-cover. Now, in the same situation, I get at most something like 30% (and more often something like 20-22%). It's a BIG nerf to all weapons that aren't melee and handguns. The worst I've seen is my doctor with 70 MM, using a sniper rifle, having 15% hit chance on a thug 7 tiles away behind full cover. Yes, sniper rifles aren't meant to be "good" at low range, but this is WAY too low, and it wasn't like that before the update, at all...
Is this thing wanted by the dev team ? Or is it a "bug" ?
Personnally, I really don't like this change, and I have nearly 150 hours of play...
 
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Just want to clarify that the precinct update is free. The paid DLC is adding a new boss and the fixer into the game.

I'm aware, I don't mean any shade on any of the developers at Romero.
 
I don't know if this is a bug or if this is a new "feature", but all the weapons seems useless when used at low range.
I'll explain myself... Before the update - and the DLC - weapons like a rifle would give at least 50% hit chance when used 5-6 tiles away with something like 75 marksmanship and enemy in half-cover. Now, in the same situation, I get at most something like 30% (and more often something like 20-22%). It's a BIG nerf to all weapons that aren't melee and handguns. The worst I've seen is my doctor with 70 MM, using a sniper rifle, having 15% hit chance on a thug 7 tiles away behind full cover. Yes, sniper rifles aren't meant to be "good" at low range, but this is WAY too low, and it wasn't like that before the update, at all...
Is this thing wanted by the dev team ? Or is it a "bug" ?
Personnally, I really don't like this change, and I have nearly 150 hours of play...
I noticed the same thing, but I don't think it's a bad thing. It encourages you to use secondary weapons (pistols are all close range) and melee weapons (which are now much better since they have a 100% hit chance) :)
 
I noticed the same thing, but I don't think it's a bad thing. It encourages you to use secondary weapons (pistols are all close range) and melee weapons (which are now much better since they have a 100% hit chance) :)
I strongly disagree here. Pistols hit for 10 damage, maybe 20. If an enemy near you has 110 hit points, how are you taking him down quickly enough so he doesn't kill all your crew ? Being forced to use pistols every turn is ridiculous...
Melee is way better, yes. But is situational, it lets you wide open nearly every time, which is bad.
I'm sorry but this is bad design, and that's a fact. Look at Xcom and other games like it.
 
I strongly disagree here. Pistols hit for 10 damage, maybe 20. If an enemy near you has 110 hit points, how are you taking him down quickly enough so he doesn't kill all your crew ? Being forced to use pistols every turn is ridiculous...
Melee is way better, yes. But is situational, it lets you wide open nearly every time, which is bad.
I'm sorry but this is bad design, and that's a fact. Look at Xcom and other games like it.
In that case, and these questions are not meant to be rethorical:
  • Why allow a close range fight in the first place if you're not willing/equipped to deal with it? I'll grant you that some fights start at close range, but most of the fights I've encountered all started at long range.
  • Why not disengage and move the fight to long(er) range again? Unless you're stuck at the end of a hallway or something, you could move away from the enemy to create some distance.
Aside from pistols, (sub)machine guns and shotguns perform well at close range too.
 
In that case, and these questions are not meant to be rethorical:
  • Why allow a close range fight in the first place if you're not willing/equipped to deal with it? I'll grant you that some fights start at close range, but most of the fights I've encountered all started at long range.
  • Why not disengage and move the fight to long(er) range again? Unless you're stuck at the end of a hallway or something, you could move away from the enemy to create some distance.
Aside from pistols, (sub)machine guns and shotguns perform well at close range too.
So, what you're saying is exactly what I was saying : anything except close range weapons is irrelevant. And 7-8 tiles are not really "close" IMHO.
 
So, what you're saying is exactly what I was saying : anything except close range weapons is irrelevant. And 7-8 tiles are not really "close" IMHO.
My understanding is that we agreed from the start that long range weapons are currently unsuited for close range combat. I've never claimed otherwise. What we were discussing, as far as I know, is whether this is desired. From what I can tell, you say it isn't while I'd argue it is (for the reasons mentioned in the previous posts). Am I misunderstanding you?
 
My understanding is that we agreed from the start that long range weapons are currently unsuited for close range combat. I've never claimed otherwise. What we were discussing, as far as I know, is whether this is desired. From what I can tell, you say it isn't while I'd argue it is (for the reasons mentioned in the previous posts). Am I misunderstanding you?
No you're not. But I'm very surprised that you can say it is desired when 70% of the weapons in the game become totally useless with this change. It's not healthy for the game.
 
No you're not. But I'm very surprised that you can say it is desired when 70% of the weapons in the game become totally useless with this change. It's not healthy for the game.
I never said it is desired for 70% of the weapons in the game to become totally useless. I agree that that would be undesired, but I disagree with the premise.

As we agree upon, long range weapons, i.e., rifles and especially sniper rifles, perform poorly at close range. That does not make them totally useless: they perform well at long(er) range, which is what they are intended for. On the other hand, close range weapons such as machine guns and shotguns, perform poorly at long range and well at close range, which again is what they are intended for. Different types of weapons perform differently in different situations, so you need to either match your weapon to the situation or alter the situation to match your weapon. I don't consider this bad game design.
 
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Screenshot from 2021-11-20 15-29-33.pngScreenshot from 2021-11-20 15-35-52.png

The first picture is in my current playthrough. Maxim has 100 marksmanship and a rifle, the enemy is behind a bench which grants full cover, the distance is three paces and the hit chance with a rifle is 69%. I think that's quite fair.
The second picture is of a new game I just started. Mabel has 75 marksmanship and the same rifle (same model, lower rarity but I don't think that affects marksmanship). The closest enemy is one pace away and is behind full cover, with a 17% hit chance. The other one is two paces away and has no cover, with a 49% hit chance. Again, I think this is quite fair. You can shoot with a 17% hit chance, but you can also maneuver away in such a way that you either create more distance and/or they no longer have (full) cover. Or, if you progress in the game, you can use abilities that force the thug to move, thus also removing their cover. Or you can mark them to decrease their defence by 25, which almost negates the full cover. Or you can invest in your crew to raise their marksmanship; your boss will gain it over time with notoriety, you can use trinkets, special bullets, weapon proficiency, high morale and happiness, and possibly some more. I'll grant you that 17% is not a lot. However, I think there are quite some things you can do to improve those odds.
 
Where are the full patch notes?

Pickpocket when not bugged is awesome now. It seems to have issues on large enemy encounters.

Fixer gangsters seem to have a extremely long distance throw for those traps. Likely could be a few squares shorter and still be great. I love the varied quality of items now.

Lastly I don't see a change in the police and how they act was this not added or did I miss a game setting?
 
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The first picture is in my current playthrough. Maxim has 100 marksmanship and a rifle, the enemy is behind a bench which grants full cover, the distance is three paces and the hit chance with a rifle is 69%. I think that's quite fair.
The second picture is of a new game I just started. Mabel has 75 marksmanship and the same rifle (same model, lower rarity but I don't think that affects marksmanship). The closest enemy is one pace away and is behind full cover, with a 17% hit chance. The other one is two paces away and has no cover, with a 49% hit chance. Again, I think this is quite fair. You can shoot with a 17% hit chance, but you can also maneuver away in such a way that you either create more distance and/or they no longer have (full) cover. Or, if you progress in the game, you can use abilities that force the thug to move, thus also removing their cover. Or you can mark them to decrease their defence by 25, which almost negates the full cover. Or you can invest in your crew to raise their marksmanship; your boss will gain it over time with notoriety, you can use trinkets, special bullets, weapon proficiency, high morale and happiness, and possibly some more. I'll grant you that 17% is not a lot. However, I think there are quite some things you can do to improve those odds.
I get your point. And I appreciate the screenshots and the expalantions. gj, man.
BUT ! 17% on the second one. With a rifle. My point ? It's a no-no. I would be glad to have 47% in that case. But 17%, really ? No, I can't stand these unreal odds. Take a rifle, a real one, IRL, put yourself at 2 meters, and tell me that you have 17% chance to hit a man. I can guarantee you that it's definitely higher than that.

And the other point you made in your other post where you say :
As we agree upon, long range weapons, i.e., rifles and especially sniper rifles, perform poorly at close range. That does not make them totally useless: they perform well at long(er) range, which is what they are intended for. On the other hand, close range weapons such as machine guns and shotguns, perform poorly at long range and well at close range, which again is what they are intended for. Different types of weapons perform differently in different situations, so you need to either match your weapon to the situation or alter the situation to match your weapon. I don't consider this bad game design.
Yes, I agree with SOME things. sniper rifles SHOULD perform poorly at low range. Not rifles. Not THAT bad at THAT range.
And the other thing : different types of weapons perform differently in different situations ? Agreed again. But not in a game where you PAY your gangsters that come with ONE or maybe TWO weapon types. What if you recruit a doctor that can only handle sniper rifles ? And go into a small racket, so she's at most at 10 range, having at most 40% chance to hit ? What do you do ? Never recruit her ? Use only 10-damage pistols ? THIS is what I call bad design. I agree with everything you said, but the nerfs to long range/short range are way WAY exaggerated, and IMHo it BREAKS the game, making it artificially more difficult, for no real purpose except the mean of it.
 
Overall dlc + patch are fine, but when grouped. the dlc alone for what it brings is not worth the money you give, 15 $ for a racket and a boss. I would have expected more activity sincerely.
 
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I get your point. And I appreciate the screenshots and the expalantions. gj, man.
BUT ! 17% on the second one. With a rifle. My point ? It's a no-no. I would be glad to have 47% in that case. But 17%, really ? No, I can't stand these unreal odds. Take a rifle, a real one, IRL, put yourself at 2 meters, and tell me that you have 17% chance to hit a man. I can guarantee you that it's definitely higher than that.
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on the 17% :p From a gameplay perspective I personally think 17% is completely fine in that case. As I see it, shooting simply isn't the tactical choice there, and repositioning or swapping weapons (or just shanking that thug) is more productive.

As for real life, I wouldn't know as I've never handled a real gun and I don't know all the factors that are being abstracted away in this turn-based game. If it's simply "can I hit that person in front of me" then sure, I probably should be able to do so even with a sniper rifle. If this person is allowed to jump, duck and run behind me and whatnot, I wouldn't be so sure. I've played some Borderlands 2 and Sniper Elite 4, for what it's worth, and in both cases (in my experience) sniper rifles excel in situations where the enemy is not expected to move much (relatively to the distance between you and them). If the enemy was right in front of me in Borderlands I often couldn't hit them properly with a sniper rifle (especially the psychos). In Sniper Elite I could still shoulder my rifle and hit them somewhat accurately, but it was still better to swap to a pistol since it was much easier for me to change my aim at that range. I myself wouldn't be certain that even 17% is exaggerated if we're taking those kinds of conditions into account. Then again, I might very well just suck at shooters ;)
The developers might be able to shed more light on this :)

Yes, I agree with SOME things. sniper rifles SHOULD perform poorly at low range. Not rifles. Not THAT bad at THAT range.
And the other thing : different types of weapons perform differently in different situations ? Agreed again. But not in a game where you PAY your gangsters that come with ONE or maybe TWO weapon types. What if you recruit a doctor that can only handle sniper rifles ? And go into a small racket, so she's at most at 10 range, having at most 40% chance to hit ? What do you do ? Never recruit her ? Use only 10-damage pistols ? THIS is what I call bad design. I agree with everything you said, but the nerfs to long range/short range are way WAY exaggerated, and IMHo it BREAKS the game, making it artificially more difficult, for no real purpose except the mean of it.
The doctor scenario is very familiar, you have my support there :p Norah can't hit much at anything but long range with her starting sniper rifle, so I tend to swap it for a rifle as soon as I remember to do so, and equip her with a pistol and (since the update) a melee weapon. The rifle still has a marksmanship penalty at close range, but much less so than a sniper rifle. On a side note, all doctors should be able to use both rifles and sniper rifles (https://eos.paradoxwikis.com/Gangster#Professions).

To answer "What do you do ? Never recruit her ? Use only 10-damage pistols ?": what I would do is indeed use a pistol, or a melee weapon, and accept that she will probably not fulfill her full potential in close range fights. However, I'd also recruit an enforcer or a demolitionist for those close range fights since they are more suited for those (and less suited for the long range ones, but that's where your doctor's (sniper) rifle excels). Your crew will probably take damage in close quarters, so use the doctor to heal them; give her some explosives as well for tough fights. If you pick the surgical precision talent, the doctor's every shot will have a 55% to cause bleeding; with two pistol shots per turn, that's quite a lot of damage-over-time ;)

To briefly address pistols, by the way: the common model 1895 rifle (https://eos.paradoxwikis.com/Rifles) does 23-41 damage, the common M1911 pistol (https://eos.paradoxwikis.com/Handguns) does 13-19 damage twice for a total of 26-38. I'd say that's actually quite good :) The difference isn't much different at higher rarity levels. Pistols have the added bonus of firing twice instead of once, so you can either shoot two different enemies or shoot an enemy twice, meaning you still do some damage even if you miss once. On the other hand, I don't know if armour decreases damage by a percentage of by an absolute amount. If it's absolute, then it will absorb more damage from two pistol shots than from a single rifle shot.

Looking back on our previous posts, I'm actually not sure if I disagree with you on a fundamental level. That is, in this last post you've said both that sniper rifles shouldn't perform this poorly at this range and that it breaks the game. I disagree with the latter as I think I've discussed plenty of ways to manage and overcome the difficulty. However, I'm impartial to the former. I don't think it necessary to change it, but I'm not opposed to it either so I'm not arguing with you there.
In any case, thanks for your time! It's been an interesting back-and-forth :D
 
Looking back on our previous posts, I'm actually not sure if I disagree with you on a fundamental level. That is, in this last post you've said both that sniper rifles shouldn't perform this poorly at this range and that it breaks the game. I disagree with the latter as I think I've discussed plenty of ways to manage and overcome the difficulty. However, I'm impartial to the former. I don't think it necessary to change it, but I'm not opposed to it either so I'm not arguing with you there.
In any case, thanks for your time! It's been an interesting back-and-forth :D

Let's put a conclusion on my point : I'm not against the change. Actually, a change was necessary. But this is "too much" of a change for me.

For an average gangster, with a sniper rifle, you can't reposition AND shoot in the same turn, so you take free damage if your gangster can only use sniper rifles. And if you're using pistols, it's useless to reposition because you'll lose some % hit chance, and one of two shot of your pistol, so you do 50% of your potential damage while staying at "closer" range, which puts you at more % hit chance from the enemies, so more damage taken on average.
For an average gangster, with a regular rifle, it's the same thing, because even if you're at let's say 6 tiles away (which isn't THAT far), your chance to hit is something like 75% on a wide open enemy, and 35% on a full cover enemy. Way too low. Going from 75% to 60% would still be a nerf, and be better than what we have now.

Now, on the weapons... Submachine guns lowers your marksmanship, so now you don't have more than 75% hit chance EVEN AT POINT BLANK RANGE (tested just now with a -15 MM SMG on Frankie Donovan with 200 notoriety).
Machine guns lowers your maksmanship too, AND you can't move the same turn. So it's worse. I'm not talking about the perk that allows you to move and shoot the same turn, because it's 200 kills away (don't have the real number right now), and doing 200 kills with these changes is becoming really hard, and too long to be useful. Actually, it was hard even before the update...
We already talked about sniper rifles that are useful only at 15+ tiles away, which are quite rare in the game (you can check; safehouses are the bigger fights in the game). And rifles, only useful at 10+ tiles away, and absolutely suboptimal when it's closer than that.
That means the best weapons now are shotguns, pistols, and obviously melee. AND pistols/melee are putting you at a disadvantage (enemies can hit you easily), and pistols even do less damage than other weapons.
If you could equip the weapons of your choice on anybody, the change wouldn't be so harsh... But you can't. So, some gangsters becomes irrelevant to me, especially early game, and some perks like "allows this gangster to use shotgun" becomes mandatory for the gangster to be relevant in your squad.

Don't get me wrong, though : the changes were necessary. It was too easy before. But these are too hard. WAY too hard. Like a "nerf hammer" to 60% of the game's weapons.
And in the future, I can guarantee you'll find yourself hiring mostly gangsters that can use shotguns, and even so, you'll use mostly pistols/melee. Using sniper rifles, or even regular rifles, becomes suboptimal in 75% of the fights. That's my point.

I would be glad if the changes were going from something like 80% hit chance to 60%, or even maybe 50%. But NOT from 80% to 30% compared to before the update... I've even seen ridiculous hit chances like 10%, with 80 marksmanship, a rifle, full cover, and 8 tiles away. I would be ok for 35%, but I'm not for "that"...

Now, I assume we can agree that we disagree on this weapons' update :)
So let's stop this conversation, we can't convince each other ;)
Was interesting to see another player's point, though. Thank you :)
 
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