Balance Issue: Modded Mk.1's Reign of Tyranny

[Cosmicguy21]

Oh, good lord.

 

I hate the Modded Mk.1. He is easily the most frustrating thing in the game. I just find him so tedious to deal with.

 

For those who don't know, the Modded Mk.1 is an elite guard present in more guarded Plastech facilities. He, like all other guards, has a heart monitor, but he also has a "Hacker" ability, which passively 'un-hacks' one device in a 6-tile radius every turn,  and a "Cyber conciousness" which makes him become a daemon on a random object for the time period he's KO'd.

 

He's ridiculous. He has no weaknesses. Every other elite guard has a fair, realistic and exploitable weak spot, such as armoured guards being hittable by armour-piercing weapons, or shielded guards being hackable. But this guy is just a menace to society.

 

He WILL interfere with anything you attempt to do near him, and there's nothing you can do about it. Ignoring him allows him to continue un-hacking your devices, knocking him out releases a daemon, and killing him raises the alarm.

 

I could probably deal with him if he had any combination of two of those three abilities, but not all of them. Having all of them makes him impossible and the most irritating thing in the history of Klei to me. I've spent turn after turn after turn trying to combat his tyranny, either being unable to get near enough to KO him or not daring to for fear of the daemon, as he mercilessly reclaims everything I take from the corporation's mainframe. Plonk this guy next to a main objective and hell will freeze over before you can complete it.

 

Oh, and then he adds insult to injury by glitching the Incognita music on every time he releases the daemon. Please fix that.

 

I'm not going to call out Klei just yet, because I want to know if this is actually an issue, or if i'm just insane and/or terrible at the game. Please reply to this and share your thoughts on the Modded Mk.1.

[Shirsh]

First campaign he drain all my power resourses, and push me to posing under security cams and raising alert high.

Second campaign he makes me play more stealthy and hack Plastech's stuff carefully, only when I need to directly interact with them at same turn, so I didn't had really big problems.

Now I want to make him feel foolish and useless by shooting security cameras >

not to mention sadistic pleasure when I use Hunter on his suffering conciousness or shut him down by dr.Xu

[Sycopath]

Actually you can use the "Hunter" program to kill his daemon but that kills him as well raising the alarm. His weaknesses are as follows but I agree with you that they are edge cases:

 

• Xu can disable heart monitors now so you can kill people with impunity also EMP packs do this as well.
• If you have hacked all the mainframe devices save for daemon inhabited ones his cyber consciousness has nowhere to go so he's just KO'd. (This needs testing but I'm pretty sure it's true) 

There are also other things like the fact that not all daemons are created equal: I'll take a felix at midgame or a mask at anytime over a validate or a rubiks. Also if you're lucky enough to have anatomy analysis and can spare the PWR he's dead without a sound.

 

Don't get me wrong, he's a challenge but there are ways around him.

 

Thoughts?

[Boar Head]

I don't know what it is about Plastech but they're the Corp that always gives me a hard time, something always goes wrong for me in Plastech. I have thought about the fact that he doesn't really have any weaknesses due to the fact that no matter what you do, he retaliates in some way. I try to hack everything nearby that I need to hack before I knock him out so that he doesn't put the Daemon in a place I don't want it. I will say that with seed and Prism you can just use them to cheese free power every time they take a device which felt very nice when I discovered that

 

I say the thing I hate the most is that if you knock him out and even if you hack the device he put the Daemon on, he just puts on another freaking device! You just can't escape his wrath.. :'(

 

I do hate him but now I just don't even mess with him that much. I either don't hack anything near him unless I really need it or I hack it first then knock him out until I'm done with that part of the map. He's not too terrible once you just get used to him. I had heard that there was an MKII at some point, would have been much better if one of the MKI's abilities went to him instead and they were 2 different threats.

[Boar Head]

Actually you can use the "Hunter" program to kill his daemon but that kills him as well raising the alarm. His weaknesses are as follows but I agree with you that they are edge cases:

 

• Xu can disable heart monitors now so you can kill people with impunity also EMP packs do this as well.
• If you have hacked all the mainframe devices save for daemon inhabited ones his cyber consciousness has nowhere to go so he's just KO'd. (This needs testing but I'm pretty sure it's true) 

There are also other things like the fact that not all daemons are created equal: I'll take a felix at midgame or a mask at anytime over a validate or a rubiks. Also if you're lucky enough to have anatomy analysis and can spare the PWR he's dead without a sound.

 

Don't get me wrong, he's a challenge but there are ways around him.

 

Thoughts?

Killing his Deamon kills him? Wow that's really interesting, also kind of cool. Had no idea that was the case.

[jimwinsor]

Yep Plastech is officially my least favorite corporation. Annoying does not even begin to describe the MK1 guard. Next playthrough I will avoid their territory unless I can bring in lethal damage (which seems to be the best overall solution to them).

 

"Actually you can use the "Hunter" program to kill his daemon but that kills him as well raising the alarm. His weaknesses are as follows but I agree with you that they are edge cases:

 

• Xu can disable heart monitors now so you can kill people with impunity also EMP packs do this as well.
• If you have hacked all the mainframe devices save for daemon inhabited ones his cyber consciousness has nowhere to go so he's just KO'd. (This needs testing but I'm pretty sure it's true) "

Interesting, good to know!