Rifleman Archive
Thread: Problems with HAM costs while using mindshot and other specials
Weapons have HAM costs on all three stats. Only the highest hit appears above your head. So if you take 80 H, 80 A, and 100 M, you see a blue -100 floating number.
When you buff your focus with brandy, all it does is eliminate/reduce the mind component of the drain. So, you start seeing the action or health hits.
Check the stats of your rifle, then look for ways of buffing Strength, Quickness and Focus.
TrandoshanDroidTech wrote:
This is while I am buffed with brandy and no other buff. While I should normally just get the mind drain, I get the action/health drain instead? how do I fix this other than buffing my health and action?
Disclaimer: My answers below must be taken in the context that, for the longest time, I, too, never noticed the drain on Health and Action. Therefore, I am not being critical here or suggesting I realized this all along.
Since mind costs are so dangerous and since the mind costs are high for rifles, we tend to only focus on the mind HAM costs for our rifles. But check your rifle and you will see that there are HAM costs on all three pools, and while in our specials discussions (in the FAQ thread) we list only the HAM modifiers for mind, there are actually HAM modifiers for all three pools for all combat specials. Rifles just hit mind harder than the other two pools, but specials affect all three. That is, you have always had the Health and Action "drain;" it is just that, with brandy, the mind costs are significantly reduced or eliminated so it just makes the Health and Action costs more noticable.
Thus, it is not really a problem. It is the way it works. Therefore, the same rules apply to health and action costs as apply to mind. To reduce mind costs, we boost focus. Therefore, to reduce health costs, we have to boost strength, and to reduce action costs, we have to boost quickness.
You asked how to do this without buffing Health and Action, so I assume you are asking how to deal with this without getting a full buff, because even buffing Health and Action will only delay the inevitiable. It is the secondaries mentioned above that will reduce the costs. If there are no HAM costs because Strength, Quickness, and Focus are sufficiently high, then you do not need to buff Health and Action to deal with HAM costs, only HAM damage from taking hits. With that context in mind (i.e., getting by without a full buff), here are some things you can do:
1. Migrate stats to kick up strength and quickness.
2. Buff at least strength and quickness
3. Take foods or spices that boost at least strength and quickness.
4. Live with it the way it is, using Stims to recover health and action costs.
Of course, you can do some combination of these things as well.
It is all about balance. Find the foods and spices that will boost the stats you need to boost, migrate stats to accommodate any holes in those self-buffs, and if you have novice medic, you can favor mind because health and action can be healed easily.
The obvious answer is get a full buff, but that can be expensive and you cannot always find a Doc. So you just have to find a good balance.
Message Edited by Sotaudi on 05-06-2004 10:13 AM
MSP0 wrote:
Weapons have HAM costs on all three stats. Only the highest hit appears above your head. So if you take 80 H, 80 A, and 100 M, you see a blue -100 floating number.