Rapier Discussion

[JimThePea]

Okay, so Rapier, that's a thing, how're people finding it in this post-Parasite-nerf world?

After toying about with it as a starting program, I've found it's like going on a crazy firewall-breaking bender, riiiight up until you hit alarm level 2, which can be considered the hangover. The firewalls raise and suddenly the same camera that would've cost 1 PWR to hack now costs 4 PWR, hit those higher alarm levels and/or a Rubik daemon and it's painful. You can conceivably get into a situation where it would cost 30 PWR to hack a 5 firewall turret/safe/camera.

I'm going to need more time with it to figure out if it's going to stop me having to go back to Lockpick, but my advice is: pick up another breaker asap, it's amazing right at the start but you need something sensible to fall back on. Even if the first thing you find is Oracle, grab it, spam it and hack everything you see while you still can!

Edit: Don't know how I managed to post this in 'Suggestions and Feedback', if a nice mod would stick it in 'General Discussion and Strategies' that would be greatly appreciated!

[jimwinsor]

One thing I learned, Rapier and Emergency Drip do NOT go together.

 

Alarm level 3 = Rapier costs 4. And if you drop to 3 power exactly, then you're checkmated.

 

Other than that, I like Rapier. Just need to aggressively explore at Alarm level 0 to get it to be advantageous.

[Sando]

Not fussed so far - even with scanning and fairly aggressive early exploration you might not find much straight away, and then you've got some very expensive hacking to deal with.  Lockpick seems like a safer option, obviously Parasite is pretty much dead in the water right now.

[ildarz]

Okay, so Rapier, that's a thing, how're people finding it in this post-Parasite-nerf world?

After toying about with it as a starting program, I've found it's like going on a crazy firewall-breaking bender, riiiight up until you hit alarm level 2, which can be considered the hangover. The firewalls raise and suddenly the same camera that would've cost 1 PWR to hack now costs 4 PWR.

 

It costs 6, actually (3 per point on alarm level 2).

 

In short, Rapier is extremely good for squad of 3-4 high level agents equipped with stims and stealth devices (you can often explore entire level on alarm level 0), and very bad after you hit alarm level 2, which is almost guarantied with two low-level agents.

 

In conjunction with Parasite nerf we got very strange situation. It can be even easier than before to play on later game stages (assuming you survive long enough), and there is bottleneck in the beginning of the game - you have agents with low skills, you don't have proper equipment, and hacking tools which you got after getting more experience are even less reliable than Lockpick 1.0 .

[JimThePea]

It costs 6, actually (3 per point on alarm level 2).

In short, Rapier is extremely good for squad of 3-4 high level agents equipped with stims and stealth devices (you can often explore entire level on alarm level 0), and very bad after you hit alarm level 2, which is almost guarantied with two low-level agents.

Yeah, my mistake, when I wrote it I thought it was 1 PWR at alarm levels 0 and 1, then 2 PWR at 2, 3 at 3, etc. Which maybe would be good for Rapier v2.0,

You're right about the problems it can cause if you've got few/slow agents, I'm kind of wondering why it's included as a starting program, it's not unworkable but in a lot of ways it's a bit like Hammer or Knife, you can't really use it on it's own, especially early on.

[jimwinsor]

I think if Internationale is one of your starting two, it's workable. Maybe.

[Galdred]

The problem is that it is a program that makes things easier when things go well, and harsher when they begin to go wrong, while you usually want it the other way around.

Rapier could be good as a secondary hacking tool, to save power in the beginning but it is way too risky to use it as the main hacking program.

[Yarrr]

I like it, I tend to have most of the level explored before Alarm Level 2 in the early game. Though I might be biased because in that same run I got a Parasite 2.0 in my second mission. But yeah, you're dependant on picking up another firewall breaker asap.

[jimwinsor]

It definitely has to be supplemented by something by Day 3, I've discovered, when you run into large firewalls on late activating cameras. So now, I'm not so sure it's a good pick after all.

[JimThePea]

The problem is that it is a program that makes things easier when things go well, and harsher when they begin to go wrong, while you usually want it the other way around.

Rapier could be good as a secondary hacking tool, to save power in the beginning but it is way too risky to use it as the main hacking program.

 

Agreed, makes me wonder what an anti-Rapier would perform like, where it starts at 6 PWR to use and goes down as the alarm increases, it might lead to strategic alarm raising, which would be weird but interesting.