Set them to 'Manufacture' as soon as you buy them. They'll start generating points based on your upgrades, team Discipline and numbers as well as Foreman Intelligence. Go out and get the resources to build Rifles to start with, then move to Automatic Weapons when you get enough for a big load of Durasteel and they're selling for 1240 or whatever it is at Hamah Bay. There's other things to build that might be more optimum later, but that's a good way to start.
Yeah I was just saying for rise from the ashes it might be needed if you go for hunting early. I have been playing awhile just not tried rise from the ashes yet so don't know how difficult combat would be or how tight money is. Grim said ironman as well so would assume combat is pretty risky early on. Hunting just seemed better than working in the factory and buying food with your wages since you could get food from that and stuff to sell. Although your stats might be so low it is just not possible at the start even with sharpshooter. I think you only get like 300 points in rise from the ashes so sharpshooter would be a big investment.
You can always fit in as ten pointer if you have to, just talk yourself into one of the disadvantages you don't really want to take, though Sharpshooter is lower on my list of priorities to start.
Unless you spend points on the soldier class, you're almost certainly going to start off with terrible combat stats in a rise start so you're going to be mostly reliant on your followers in combat for quite awhile. Combining that with Ironman really makes the game brutal since you're going to constantly have whoever your main combat followers are dying permanently. That means unless you want to eventually just kill off all the uniques you're going to have to train up a constant supply of random scrubs to just toss into the meat grinder. There is no amount of gear or training that will ever allow you to avoid deaths in an iron man game unless you just never fight anything dangerous.
Sounds about right lol. I wonder what quickstart gives you. Never actually tried it.
Knives first is also an alternative since it is production points efficient. They just buy materials discounted from Aimee's Goods and the knives are sold in the market near your house so there's no need to travel, saving stamina.
Is it still possible to get Deadly Strike or Crackshot without Soldier level 2? The old method (taking Soldier 2, picking the trait, then removing Soldier 2) was patched, right?
You can get them with Adonis and/or Superb but you can't get those in a Rise start. You might still be able to get Crackshot with Sharpshooter (which you can then disable again) I don't remember if that's enough by itself but Deadly Strike is definitely a no without Soldier unless it's an enhanced start so you can pick Adonis/Superb. You cans till get soldier and then remove it after taking wildborn but not deadly strike. Not sure if that's intended or an oversight.
I just tried out the crafter quick start build and it has full business class. It also had wealthy, engineer, and crackshot. So try out the quick builds they actually seem good.
There's a wiki:
I am not sure why you fixate on gameplay benefits as being somehow categorically different from advance access. They are both benefits. If you really believe that Patreon is a marketplace with developers selling products, I think that you misunderstand Pateon and patronage in general.
It took me a while to realize this but yes, knives are the way to go for making money.
'Brainy,' 'Deadly Strike' and 'Techie' are protected in that you can't run up your attributes or take a skill class and then pick them and lower the Attribute or delete the Skill Class. 'Attractive' is partially protected as you can't raise Charm to take it and then lower it after selecting Attractive, but you can take Slaver -3, choose 'Attractive' and then remove Slaver-3.
Sounds about right. I suspect the Adonis/Superb options might actually be intended since I get the feeling Grim considers an "enhanced" game basically cheat mode. So why lock everything down for that mode? Any shenanigans that are still possible in a Rise game are probably unintended though I would guess.
This is where some of the higher Skill Classes and Expert levels can come in handy. If you do start as an Expert Soldier you're pretty much a top-tier merc yourself and can equip two followers with Combat Armor and add Kate and perhaps Doyle and have a well-armored team that can take on most everyone from the outset and doesn't bury you in negative income. Stay away from the nastiest ones like the Black Guardsmen and Gunner on Marsten Avenue until you have Duraplate.
Oh I'm not denying that the skill classes are very helpful. I'm just saying that in a Rise game I consider the non stat related traits more important so I'm more likely to take zero skill classes so I can load up on most of the good traits even if it means I can't have Deadly Strike (which is normally an automatic pick for me). My usual starts do include enough influence for me to pick up Ayden on day 1 so as you mentioned that pretty much makes any early game combat a cakewalk even if everyone else in your party is entirely useless (including MC). Kate is an obvious pickup if you can get Ayden since that gets you 1 merc in better than Duraplate and another in effectively a stealth suit on day 1. Tough to beat that, although Ayden does have a high salary so if you're playing on Dying World no ammo pack for awhile unless you get lucky on events.
