HTML Masters of Raana [v0.8.3.8 public] [GrimDark]

[OneMoreZoner]

Here is update that makes mod less ugly also some minor fixes.

Aha, awesome, thanks. I also made an edit with additional comment regarding training in previous reply.

These look great. Thank you!

 

[NoUseForAName3]

1.) Money. Money is extremely easy with Workshop now. You build Workshop, you upgrade it, especially the upgrade on the top part. You assign your most disciplined random generic slaves to it, preferably those with Workaholic trait, you assign a foreman with good intelligence. You set it to Manufacturing. You wait one day and the next day the Production Points would have been generated. You buy discounted steel, wood, fasteners, or durasteel from Aimee's Goods in Stokke Hills. You use the production points to produce the items on the first page. Knives. Rifles. You sell the knives in the market beside your house. You sell rifles and auto rifles every 7 days or when you stockpiled enough to Hamah Bay because it sells more there. Hamah Bay is accessed via the port in Darkmere, past Imogen's Barrow. You spend money to earn more money. Assigning NPCs to Workshop involves going to the Jobs and Titles part of NPC Menu and going to page 3 or 4 of the Jobs part, clicking the <- -> options.

2.) Malevolent is removeable which is unfortunate for my account. Malevolent can be lost by assigning your girl to a slavemaster with Pure trait. It is also decreased/removed by the Household stat "Purity" which is raised by pure NPCs with Happiness 40+. It is also decreased/removed slowly if the malevolent NPC's Kindness stat is 60+. As for shamefast and other traits, if all else fails, you can go to the Palace area, buy a Neuraclean from the Transit Department, and apply it via Inventory -> Accessories -> Applicants. It removes most traits not named Warrior, Brawler, Ammo Pack, Green Thumb, Scavenger, other unique traits. It also removes positive traits and traits you want to keep so its a last option nuke.

IMPORTANT EDIT: It is Neuraclean, not Mindmancer. Also, you cannot use it on Aria Bianchii because you cannot neuraclean a Paragon. Even if Aria has another prevailing status (Slave or Wife), she always has an underlying Paragon status and it will always be in-play.

3.) All actions involving NPCs is now moved to the Actions tab in the NPC Menu. Selling, piercing, surgery, Age up. You had to have visited each location once in 0.8.3+.

Spoiler: What it looks like

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4.) You use your mercs to complete Bounties, Arena fights, and capture slaves.

Only to Neuraclaen (and Raikan Gale):
Are you sure that Neuraclean (and Raikan Gale) cannot be used on Aria (or any Paragon or "dormant" paragon, with "ostatus=5"), even if the willpower of the npc is 19 or lower? - You will never be able to use a breaker (Mindmancer) on these, but Neuraclean (and Raikan Gale) might be a different matter.

 

[tsap]

This is the third time I play the game. It is too darn difficult to make money enough to make the upgrades and to buy the necessary items (armors and the sort). Since I am a obssesive kind of guy I strive through it anyway: now I have nearly 22 inhabitants in my manor, and a dozen more kids. But still I spend a lot of time upscaling them, giving them education or skills, just because I want to beat the game (and in the meanwhile the game beats me). I hate the traits that cannot really be erased but again at a lot of cost and time. Malevolent is something I dont like in people, and in fictional not as partners indeed. I want the chance to make pure girls who falls for me, with no shamefast, shy, perverted, malevolent, feminist (there are some other that I cannot recall now, but mostly that kind of "downside" of npcs). So I have a mercenary army, and the question is what for? I cannot use them to go to house cammora or whatever the name and make them fight for me. Not even my private family harem. This time (with this version) I cannot even improve their looks: the medical facilities in the way to the palace dont have the buttom like last version. I lost the opportunity of doing the getting my bearings quest, because since I dont like the npc (and he is not even a beautiful lady but a perverted and disgusting guy he died quickly). The game should not be about running from one task to the other to avoid depressive, prone to scape, rebelious slaves. Should be an adventure with more improvements than just another coin in the purse or another girl to make pregnant. So a bit dissapointed. But again, like always, it is free and have a lot of work (a good effort in terms of story) from the dev, so thanks anyway.

Excellent post that already received some fine answers. I just add a couple opinions of mine (or my MC in the game).

- no need to make haste. You are the only important individual in your own game, so choose your own pace as well rather than let the game (and even less other players opinions) affect your decisions

- the game kind of eagerly pushes slaves to you and your household. You don't need nearly that many, so you can be quite picky and grab only those you think you will probably enjoy the most

"So I have a mercenary army, and the question is what for?" you wrote and I like to tell you that I still think the same after some thirty more or less serious efforts to play this great game with several slightly different approaches.
My MC doesn't need mercs. Mercs need my MC, not the other way around, so it is kind of ridiculous to PAY THEM a single Raanian dollar for their mostly completely unneeded services. It is mercs who should pay my MC, actually. (One properly domesticated wrool cat does better job at night than a house full of mercs who can't be bothered to work the night shift.)

 

[OneMoreZoner]

To GD-studios:

I have been following the development of this game for quite a while. It is great to see it getting so far. Your writing has created a compelling world full of dangers, temptations and mysteries. And fun to hang around in.
Congratulations.

I am happy to notice that there is a growing interest in modding MoR on this forum. This reminds me of the modding history of the Baldur's Gate Trilogy (BG1/BG2/ToB). These games, despite being very long to begin with and the engine having no mod support or tools whatsoever, did create a compelling world that players wanted to spend more time in. So they ended up with an active modding community, and well over 100 mods that added boatloads of extra content. In fact, the modding community is still active to this day. 25 years later! Not bad, eh?

So, I have two questions:

1. What is your current view on players adding content mods to MoR? Things like more areas, more quests, more characters and such? Do you discourage it, or stay out of it or, perhaps, encourage it and are even considering facilitating it?

2. How familiar are you with the modding history of Baldur's Gate? Would you like to hear some amusing and hopefully useful stories from these old times? (I'm asking because I'll have to type not a post but a bloody essay if you say yes )

Cheers!

 

[OneMoreZoner]

To GD-studios:

I am also interested in the opinion of the the forum-at-large.

If, say, there was a how-to manual/tools/support,

would *you* consider making a mod for MoR?

 

[khumak]

There was some talk about modding in the discord awhile back and it sounded like the biggest hurdle for this game is version compatibility. I've done some modding for Renpy and it's pretty easy to make a mod that is automatically compatible with the current version of the game and all future versions without the modder needing to ever update anything unless the dev does something specific that breaks the mod. For this game it sounded like either you'd have to update the mod for every version or Grim would have to like the mod enough to just include it as part of the game.

 

[tsap]

I am also interested in the opinion of the the forum-at-large.

If, say, there was a how-to manual/tools/support,

would *you* consider making a mod for MoR?

Modders are usually the greatest fans of the game they are modding. I love MoR and truly like it's current state that still allows me to tinker a little bit those few things I don't appreciate as much as I probably should. (Nerfed charuks, some caps on skills, stats and lowered masterlove, heh)
But to make a real mod? Not my thing, I am afraid. I am writing trough several language-barriers and in addition making some effort to think what I write in order to not write what I think. My time for modding was spent during the time of NWN - Never Winter Nights, if someone still remembers that thing. Baldurs Gate is a bit too modern for my tastes, methinks.

 

[OneMoreZoner]

Modders are usually the greatest fans of the game they are modding. I love MoR and truly like it's current state that still allows me to tinker a little bit those few things I don't appreciate as much as I probably should. (Nerfed charuks, some caps on skills, stats and lowered masterlove, heh)
But to make a real mod? Not my thing, I am afraid. I am writing trough several language-barriers and in addition making some effort to think what I write in order to not write what I think. My time for modding was spent during the time of NWN - Never Winter Nights, if someone still remembers that thing. Baldurs Gate is a bit too modern for my tastes, methinks.

Yep. BG1/BG2 are even older than NWN. They were made by the same people and set in the same world too. But they used the older isometric Infinity engine, while NWN jumped to full 3D. Also, due to the huge interest in modding BG, the studio took a hint and integrated a mod manager and modding tools in NWN right from the start. Saved a lot of work for everyone.

Man, NWN. That paladin and her dense bf made quite the mess, didn't they.

 

[harem.king]

Man, NWN. That paladin and her dense bf made quite the mess, didn't they.

No, they were scapegoats.

 

[Clemency]

Ye, I keep forgetting that low willpower Paragons can be neuracleaned (listed in the wiki too) since all of mine are at 80 or higher willpower.

Speaking of traits, I wonder how everyone else approaches it and what are their views on each trait. What are everyone's top tier and bottom tier traits since we have different approaches to this game.

Personally, my top 10 traits are a mixture of roleplay and gameplay reasons and it goes like this:

Spoiler: Show Traits List

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[Clemency]

So I have a mercenary army, and the question is what for?

Wait, follow up reply to my earlier one, when you say mercenary army, what exactly do you mean? Does that include guys like Armand, Aiko, Jack, and Loren or do you just mean the expensive $300+ combat oriented ones with Ammo Pack? Because while the expensive Ammo Pack mercenaries can be ignored and not hired, mercs and servants like Armand and Aiko are more crucial and your financial straits might be helped by Armand.

I should probably explain how to gain cash passively outside of workshops and selling slaves at auctions.

Here is my current economy screen at day 357 and I will break down how I got each source of passive income:



City Investments is done via interacting with certain stores and red human icons around the city and outlying regions. You will know it because they have an Invest button option. Read the fine print first. Some of them have demerits like Falth's mercenaries. Some aso have risks like Gero's who can straight up be eliminated by police forces. The risk for Gero is lessened a lot by having Rebecca as Skullduggerist.

Aimee's Goods is easy. You probably already have access to her store. You just upgrade things in the Location Menu and it earns her profit. Orphanage, located in the swamps, allows you to invest in them too (through Location Menu again) once your power value is high enough. Toshi's Garden requires you to have Mai Lynn, asked her background while at Amiable+ affection, and you bring her as a follower in your party while you go to Toshi's Garden. The problem here is how to gain enough money to afford these upgrades which is where the Workshop comes in

(note: Toshi's Garden income will be at $600+ once I purchased the last remaining upgrade at ~$1mil.

The small time investments should be pretty self explanatory and you probably already have them so lets go straight to the big ones.

First, the fixed price ones (you pay one time, they give you money):

Wrool Cat Wranglers just requires you to pay a one time investment of $90k. They are located in the Procoms district.

Walton's Smithery requires your Influence to be at 10k (note:

You must be registered to see the links

). You initiate conversation with the owner and you pay $200k upfront. Workshop is crucial in earning this much money faster.

Roo's General Store requires either high influence or a decent MC power value (15) according to the wiki. Could be wrong, its confusing, I will check later. You pay $75k upfront.

Caitlyn's Clinic is done by completing Caitlin's long questline, asking her her Hopes and Dreams, going to NPC Menu ---> Actions ---> Free Slave makes her a Servant and not a Slave. You do it and then you dismiss her. She will automatically build a clinic in Westside. You upgrade that clinic via its Location Menu and once you reach certain upgrades like hiring a spare doctor, it will tell you that you can hire Caitlin back to your house again. You can enslave her again if you wish to. Save before dismissing her in case you fuck up.

Now for the scaling investments (note that some of my income from these do not represent the cap for them because I am still at day 357; day 1000 players will have these even higher):

Carozza Hall. You can invest in them once your influence reaches 20k. It is best to donate swords and rifles to House Carozza. You can opt to create those in your workshop. It is best to donate after political events where their power is lowered by ~90. You can get up to 70 standing legitimately with House Carozza. Any more than that might require some exploit I do not know of.

Taverns is from you

You must be registered to see the links

. There are two of them. You can build a tavern in one and assign workers and a bartender in it. Doyle Bekker is the recommended bartender because of his age and Extroverted trait, intelligence, charisma, and a bonus roll that he has (same bonus roll as Ansel). Taverns slowly grind reputation which determines their income and you can speed it up by carousing in your own tavern. You can also enable gambling and enable prostitution there which provides more income. My tavern has 1000/1000 reputation, fully upgraded, but prostitution is turned off so you can earn more income than mine.

Caliphate is from donating Merchandise to the Mosque in Procoms, which is where NPCs with Scavenger trait come in handy (Laika, Loden, Kelly, Ansel, Jack, Bud, etc.). I do not need to be a Muslim to donate or earn income from there. This here is still at low standing so you can earn much more when it is capped at 70 standing.

Odensborg is from the Warrior's Hall in Watery Eyes. Aesir is my religion and I own the Warrior's Hall after donating a lot of slaves, swords, and rifles to it to get to 100 standing. I currently am at 150 standing and that income can still grow if I keep donating to them. Alternatively, you can for the Catholic Church instead.

Fort Sera is a quest that automatically pops up at 4k influence. You will own it at the end of the quest chain and donating captured slaves to it raises its power to 100. Donating captured slaves with ID number between 5 to 15 raises it higher than 100. The more power, the more income. Having 200+ men is important for Fort Sera because it can trigger the Political Event where Ikaanos recruits men from Fort Sera and in turn gives you Republic Standing.

Lastly, Accountants: That is the power of a 120 Administration stat Accountant. Armand Blackford and Adrienne Keller has +45% bonus to their accountant earnings and Armand starts with a much higher statline than Adrienne. You can only assign one accountant. So what you do is assign Armand, put Adrienne to school in Administration and Domestic Art so she gains 120 Administration. Then you remove Armand from his job and assign Adrienne. You can then put Armand in school or dismiss him if you do not like having guys around your house.

 

[khumak]

Speaking of traits, I wonder how everyone else approaches it and what are their views on each trait. What are everyone's top tier and bottom tier traits since we have different approaches to this game.

I mostly agree with your list. As far as my decision on who to keep though, I'm keeping all of the uniques both male and female regardless what traits they have. So far I have not seen any uniques with Addict. If I did I would save scum that away. That's an automatic sell for randoms to me. The only trait that makes me keep a non unique random male is workaholic and only if they don't also have addict.

The traits I really wish were trainable are brawler, malevolent, and scavenger. Most of the rest that are not unique are either nice to have, irrelevant, or can be sort of worked around.

Traits I dislike are Shy, Shamefast, and Attention Whore.

You didn't mention Shadowborn. Kate is an absolute badass in the early game, especially if she's malevolent because of Shadowborn. Toss her a katana, get her a few more points of melee and she's a ninja.

One pet peev I have is people who have Crackshot but not ammo pack. Crackshot is not worth much without it IMO. Weapons I'd pay for ammo for don't do enough damage to make it viable and I'm not paying for plasma or grenade launcher ammo.

 

[fernandopoo]

I find that the quickest path to money in this game is capturing and selling slaves and then building a workshop when you scrounge up enough money for it. I just started a new game today and was able to afford my first workshop on day 11, mostly from selling captured slaves and this is with a non combat build (10 melee and 25 ranged to start).


pure trait as a slave master for them like Caitlyn or Rifle Savant.

That option is still there but the method you do it has changed. You do it from inside your house now. Go to NPC menu inside your house. Click on the person you want to get surgery. Click on Actions, and then Doctor's Hall. You can also give people health implants now if you want as well.



You don't have to keep him around if you don't want to. You could just pick him up, do his quest, and dismiss him. Or get him killed if you want.

thanks a lot for the replay (feeling good knowing somebody else is sharing the time with the game first hand). Two very useful tips also: the doctor's and the pure npcs, so again, thanks.

 

[fernandopoo]

Wait, follow up reply to my earlier one, when you say mercenary army, what exactly do you mean? Does that include guys like Armand, Aiko, Jack, and Loren or do you just mean the expensive $300+ combat oriented ones with Ammo Pack? Because while the expensive Ammo Pack mercenaries can be ignored and not hired, mercs and servants like Armand and Aiko are more crucial and your financial straits might be helped by Armand.

I should probably explain how to gain cash passively outside of workshops and selling slaves at auctions.

Here is my current economy screen at day 357 and I will break down how I got each source of passive income:

View attachment 3696487

City Investments is done via interacting with certain stores and red human icons around the city and outlying regions. You will know it because they have an Invest button option. Read the fine print first. Some of them have demerits like Falth's mercenaries. Some aso have risks like Gero's who can straight up be eliminated by police forces. The risk for Gero is lessened a lot by having Rebecca as Skullduggerist.

Aimee's Goods is easy. You probably already have access to her store. You just upgrade things in the Location Menu and it earns her profit. Orphanage, located in the swamps, allows you to invest in them too (through Location Menu again) once your power value is high enough. Toshi's Garden requires you to have Mai Lynn, asked her background while at Amiable+ affection, and you bring her as a follower in your party while you go to Toshi's Garden. The problem here is how to gain enough money to afford these upgrades which is where the Workshop comes in

(note: Toshi's Garden income will be at $600+ once I purchased the last remaining upgrade at ~$1mil.

The small time investments should be pretty self explanatory and you probably already have them so lets go straight to the big ones.

First, the fixed price ones (you pay one time, they give you money):

Wrool Cat Wranglers just requires you to pay a one time investment of $90k. They are located in the Procoms district.

Walton's Smithery requires your Influence to be at 10k (note:

You must be registered to see the links

). You initiate conversation with the owner and you pay $200k upfront. Workshop is crucial in earning this much money faster.

Roo's General Store requires either high influence or a decent MC power value (15) according to the wiki. Could be wrong, its confusing, I will check later. You pay $75k upfront.

Caitlyn's Clinic is done by completing Caitlin's long questline, asking her her Hopes and Dreams, going to NPC Menu ---> Actions ---> Free Slave makes her a Servant and not a Slave. You do it and then you dismiss her. She will automatically build a clinic in Westside. You upgrade that clinic via its Location Menu and once you reach certain upgrades like hiring a spare doctor, it will tell you that you can hire Caitlin back to your house again. You can enslave her again if you wish to. Save before dismissing her in case you fuck up.

Now for the scaling investments (note that some of my income from these do not represent the cap for them because I am still at day 357; day 1000 players will have these even higher):

Carozza Hall. You can invest in them once your influence reaches 20k. It is best to donate swords and rifles to House Carozza. You can opt to create those in your workshop. It is best to donate after political events where their power is lowered by ~90. You can get up to 70 standing legitimately with House Carozza. Any more than that might require some exploit I do not know of.

Taverns is from you

You must be registered to see the links

. There are two of them. You can build a tavern in one and assign workers and a bartender in it. Doyle Bekker is the recommended bartender because of his age and Extroverted trait, intelligence, charisma, and a bonus roll that he has (same bonus roll as Ansel). Taverns slowly grind reputation which determines their income and you can speed it up by carousing in your own tavern. You can also enable gambling and enable prostitution there which provides more income. My tavern has 1000/1000 reputation, fully upgraded, but prostitution is turned off so you can earn more income than mine.

Caliphate is from donating Merchandise to the Mosque in Procoms, which is where NPCs with Scavenger trait come in handy (Laika, Loden, Kelly, Ansel, Jack, Bud, etc.). I do not need to be a Muslim to donate or earn income from there. This here is still at low standing so you can earn much more when it is capped at 70 standing.

Odensborg is from the Warrior's Hall in Watery Eyes. Aesir is my religion and I own the Warrior's Hall after donating a lot of slaves, swords, and rifles to it to get to 100 standing. I currently am at 150 standing and that income can still grow if I keep donating to them. Alternatively, you can for the Catholic Church instead.

Fort Sera is a quest that automatically pops up at 4k influence. You will own it at the end of the quest chain and donating captured slaves to it raises its power to 100. Donating captured slaves with ID number between 5 to 15 raises it higher than 100. The more power, the more income. Having 200+ men is important for Fort Sera because it can trigger the Political Event where Ikaanos recruits men from Fort Sera and in turn gives you Republic Standing.

Lastly, Accountants: That is the power of a 120 Administration stat Accountant. Armand Blackford and Adrienne Keller has +45% bonus to their accountant earnings and Armand starts with a much higher statline than Adrienne. You can only assign one accountant. So what you do is assign Armand, put Adrienne to school in Administration and Domestic Art so she gains 120 Administration. Then you remove Armand from his job and assign Adrienne. You can then put Armand in school or dismiss him if you do not like having guys around your house.

thanks a lot. I will never play the game as good as it seems you do (but I will try). Lots of tips too, thanks.

 

[fernandopoo]

Excellent post that already received some fine answers. I just add a couple opinions of mine (or my MC in the game).

- no need to make haste. You are the only important individual in your own game, so choose your own pace as well rather than let the game (and even less other players opinions) affect your decisions

- the game kind of eagerly pushes slaves to you and your household. You don't need nearly that many, so you can be quite picky and grab only those you think you will probably enjoy the most

"So I have a mercenary army, and the question is what for?" you wrote and I like to tell you that I still think the same after some thirty more or less serious efforts to play this great game with several slightly different approaches.
My MC doesn't need mercs. Mercs need my MC, not the other way around, so it is kind of ridiculous to PAY THEM a single Raanian dollar for their mostly completely unneeded services. It is mercs who should pay my MC, actually. (One properly domesticated wrool cat does better job at night than a house full of mercs who can't be bothered to work the night shift.)

Thanks a lot, man. It warms my heart, : )

 

[tsap]

Speaking of traits, I wonder how everyone else approaches it and what are their views on each trait. What are everyone's top tier and bottom tier traits since we have different approaches to this game.

Great question from a great player... but how to answer, when I am like the Jon Snow of this game. (J.S. knew nothing, as Ygritte so kindly told him in The Game of Thrones)
I have played a long time and though I have never really paid much attention to what I've been doing, I have tried to do things differently every time I start a new game. SO like you already pointed out, there are different choices depending on the chosen game style, game version, pacing, objects one tries to reach in game, etc, etc.
I have most of the time liked to have female slaves pretty innocent and my MC a bit wiser than them, so that has restrained my choices. Oh, I tried the other way round too, but while it was much fun in the beginning I couldn't take it on the long run.
My usual choices from the top of my ailing memory:
- sweet-tooth (role-play reasons)
- extrovert (role-play reasons + classic game reasons)
- materialistic (classic game reasons)
- workaholic (game reasons)
- perfectionist (game reasons)
- manager (recent game reasons, see below)

Side note: Pool party blew my old-fashioned game styles out of the window while Taverns combined with the Rare & Unique Trait Manager gave me a new opportunity to lazily earn some Raanian Dollars. I just didn't guess how much I would receive them, heh.
To put this short, there is no current hard cap for tavern's income. So I got Tuner Jackson, let him school himself a couple of months, lifted his allowance to 1000 RD and let him loose among my two taverns and their performers and waitresses.
You can guess what happened, I assume, but to me it was a big surprise. Soon there was not a single waitress to find. All the wenches were turning into Lezlie Winnipeg-class performers and the business bloomed like nothing I had seen before in the game.

 

[BruhBrehWhyItBecomeLikeTh]

What Task and locations mean? This is where place you can assign your slaves come to work there or something else?

 

[Clemency]

What Task and locations mean? This is where place you can assign your slaves come to work there or something else?

Assigning your NPCs to work is done in [Jobs and Titles]. Some assignments are undiscovered until you talk to NPCs scattered around the map to unlock it. For example, Performer is unlocked after you can access The Golden Dragon in Emerald City and ask them if they need help or slaves. You might need to be at a certain influence level to unlock some jobs. Note that assignments have multiple pages. Scroll through if you cannot the job you need them to perform.

Spoiler: Show Jobs and Titles page

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Task & Locations is for selling them (Watery Eyes & Crystal Heights), or getting them piercings (Nika's Clothes), or getting them surgery (Doctor's Hall). It is also where you access certain missions given to you like Dockgraves or Hunt Research (Project Erebos) wanting a girl with specific stat requirements. To unlock these locations, you had to have visited these establishments once and some of them requires a certain level of influence before they will talk to you. Hunt Research for example needs you to be at 6000 influence and they are the ones who will buy Prowlers from you. This is where you can also age up underaged NPCs to 18.

Spoiler: Show Task & Locations

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[Gunner Rey]

One pet peev I have is people who have Crackshot but not ammo pack. Crackshot is not worth much without it IMO. Weapons I'd pay for ammo for don't do enough damage to make it viable and I'm not paying for plasma or grenade launcher ammo.

I believe the desire of some to make melee more 'viable' has led to a situation where it's overpowered and Ranged isn't much use anymore, though I still use it as having played this game going on two years now I've found truth in the statement 'Daddy Grim giveth, Daddy Grim taketh away.' One of these days I expect he'll get around to re-balancing it and those who've gone all-in on melee will have some training to do that I've already completed.

In my view melee was always viable, before he capped it I managed to get my first Rise from the Ashes character to 386 melee, and he capped it long before there were Greatswords, Powerstrike or 'Deadly Strike.' I did it to save money in a much less forgiving economic situation, and later when it was added, slave captures. Quite frankly I liked that combat paradigm better as Melee Combat had a role and a useful purpose but it could still turn out poorly if you brought a knife to a gunfight.

As it should sometimes.

 

[khumak]

I believe the desire of some to make melee more 'viable' has led to a situation where it's overpowered and Ranged isn't much use anymore, though I still use it as having played this game going on two years now I've found truth in the statement 'Daddy Grim giveth, Daddy Grim taketh away.' One of these days I expect he'll get around to re-balancing it and those who've gone all-in on melee will have some training to do that I've already completed.

In my view melee was always viable, before he capped it I managed to get my first Rise from the Ashes character to 386 melee, and he capped it long before there were Greatswords, Powerstrike or 'Deadly Strike.' I did it to save money in a much less forgiving economic situation, and later when it was added, slave captures. Quite frankly I liked that combat paradigm better as Melee Combat had a role and a useful purpose but it could still turn out poorly if you brought a knife to a gunfight.

As it should sometimes.

The recent rebalance for ranged helped quite a bit IMO but mostly only for those with the ammo pack. It takes awhile to train most people up to the point where they can actually use a greatsword. It takes a lot less time to get plasmas for people with ammo packs. Greatswords are definitely superior to plasma once people have the skill and strength for it, but once you can afford grenade launchers those actually out damage greatswords if you're hitting at least 3 targets at once with it.

Grenade launchers take a bit of practice to use to best effect though. They're MUCH more effective if you have the Master Tactician trait because then it's not a big deal if you don't kill anything the first round since most of them are going to miss. Without it, not killing anything the first round can be painful but it frequently does mean that by the end of round 2 you've killed 3 or 4 targets in a tier 7 bounty instead of only 2.

So I would say ranged is a good option for both early game and late game but katana/greatsword is probably going to be your bread and butter in the mid game. Plus even in the late game with grenade launchers you're still going to want to use greatswords for single target damage when you can't hit 3 or more targets with a grenade launcher.

It also depends a bit on how the targets are layed out in a fight as well. If I'm doing a tier 7 bounty that includes 2 cyber cannon guys I care more about killing those 2 cyber cannon guys than I do about maximizing overall damage so I'm probably going to rely more on greatswords. If I'm facing all plasma I'm likely to kill zero the first round but heavily damage everything with grenade launchers and then have all but the boss dead at the end of round 2.

Also you can technically get cyber cannons to use yourself now if you really want to. Ammo pack doesn't work for them but you can buy ammo on the mastersphere if you really wanted to use those for the toughest fights. I'm not sure that would be profitable but you could do it.