"Women are smaller and can often move through tight spots that males
cannot. A few places in the game only females can walk through as the males
can't move further. Ideal character is female, gifted 6 STR 10 PE, 7 DUR, 2
Char, 10 IN, 10 AG, 2 Luck. With only Farsight and Jo as a hunting party,
leaving the males waiting safely elsewhere. Longer range, fewer misses, easier
sneaking, great speed, allot of AP. Use the males for fodder, burst shot guns up
close and personal." - Wizzenone
"1) Tag 'Throwing' on your main character. You will be able to get lots of
fragmentary and incendiary grenades pretty much from the start (and *tons* once
you start fighting mutants). Grenades are a poor man's rocket launcher, but you
can throw them through windows, doors, and even walls! Get your character up
against a wall so you can see the interior of a room and then force-throw a
grenade into the room (right-click, even if it claims you can't). Often you'll
throw it right in there and nail anything that's hiding..and they don't even
react. You have to be able to see the interior because otherwise it tends to
blow up on the roof or right in your face. Once you get EMP grenades, you can
murder robots insanely quickly, particularly the nasty little spider bots that
show up in packs. They bunch up as they charge, and one grenade can kill a half
dozen.
2) Burst weapons are tricky. Bursts may or may not hit the person they're aimed
at, but ALWAYS hit anyone nearby that person. Use this to your advantage..even
if you have a low chance to hit someone, if there are other enemies nearby,
shoot anyway and you'll probably hit a bunch of them. At the same time, be very
careful about bunching your guys up, since if someone burstfires at them, some
will always get hit no matter how many times you reload.
3) Put a supermutant with the full metal armor into your squad when you get a
chance, making sure they have the mutant-only perk that increases their damage
resistance. Combined with the good armor (you can steal it from other recruits
if your guy doesn't start with it) he'll have something like 90% damage
resistance. That combined with hundreds of hit points means he'll take damage
fairly often, but almost never more than a few points..I've had guys roam around
in the open for entire levels and never need to resort to a stimpack. Give him a
browning heavy machinegun and send him off on his own. One such mutant can kill
things just as fast as the other 5 members of your squad combined.
4) A couple of snipers with high Perception and sniper rifles will last the
entire game. Use them to either injure/cripple people from afar, or goad people
into attacking. Even if they have a 0% chance to hit something, often the mere
fact of shooting at the target will anger the target and make it run out of its
fortified position, wasting AP and exposing itself to further attacks. Snipers
also seem to be able to shoot really far diagonally (left-right) across the
screen, some sort of quirk in the range calculation.
5) Give someone the 'Educated' perk and all the books you pick up along the way.
Most of their skills will top 100% by late in the game, making them your
jack-of-all-trades for driving, disarming/setting bombs, healing, bartering, and
even gambling (you may have to spend points on this). You can clean out
shopkeepers if they let you gamble. The game pre-generates a bunch of gambling
outcomes so you can't just save and reload the same gamble attempt until you
win. Instead, use it in your favor. Gamble for something really cheap but equal
in value (like 1 bullet for $4), without saving, over and over until you win.
Remember how many tries it took. Then reload and gamble back up to that
particular gamble. You are now pre-destined to win it! So put everything you
have into the gamble pot, and select about an equal amount from the shopkeeper
(like $30k worth v. $28-32k worth). You will get it all. After a while the
shopkeeper gets wise to this so you have to start making riskier gambles. But it
makes you rich super fast." - Grox
