Rekrul on 25/7/2007 at 22:01

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I know what you mean.



I used water arrows in other levels, and when there's no other easy way to kill them in Soulforge. For example, you start in bay A, then you go to the end of the room and go either left or right. Either way, there's an elevator up to bays B and C. between them is a dark area with a spider bot. You can probably just leave it alone without it noticing you, but I wanted to kill it, so I used water arrows (two). I also make it a habit of smashing any disabled bots just in case the game decides to re-activate them. :)



It doesn't seem to. I've hit the small ones with the sword many times and they don't even react, but hit them with the black-jack and they rock back. Because of this, I never tried using the sword on combat bots. Strangely, once the bot is disabled, the sword is more effective at breaking them apart. It takes eight black-jack hits on any inactive bot to smash them, but only three overhead swings of the sword. Less if they've already been damaged by other bots shooting them in an attempt to get you. Brodahead arrows don't seem to affect them either, although two fire arrows will disable one. In Life of the Party, I was often able to disable the combat bot on the streets with just one fire arrow, but it never seems to work anywhere else.

Another tactic is to place a mine outside those metal doors that the extra bots come out of when you trip the alarm. The door opens, the bot steps out and gets blown up. Sometimes it will even take out two of them. Also, you can lean into all of the bot compartments, through the door, to see how many are in there. You can hit them through the closed door, but it doesn't seem to do any damage to them.



I felt that way at first also.



I usually try to zig-zag while running. If there's a doorway nearby, I like to stay near it so that I can easily get out of their line of fire. They're not very bright, but they're pretty good shots! I also found it hard to lure some of them to a good doorway. If you get too close, they kill you, but if you get too far away, they lose sight of you. Even with a fire arrow readied, some of them would just turn around and wander off. So I get closer, then they turn around and shoot me!

In a couple instances, I used a room with a door and closed it before the bots arrived. If it opens toward you, they can't open it with you on the other side, and they're stupid enough to shoot at the closed door. Occasionally, you take some splash damage, but you're safe about 90% of the time.

Rekrul on 27/7/2007 at 23:07

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I agree, but it seems to work, so who am I to argue with it. :)



Sometimes it's necessary. For example, if they end up disabled in a doorway, they'll block it, or if they get crushed under an elevator, they'll usually keep it from going all the way to the bottom. If they don't, they'll keep it from going up.

However, I'm a little paranoid that the game might bring one of them back to life. In the Bank mission, there's a room with two cameras and two of the little bots who seem to be talking. I turned out the lights, then used water arrows to disable both (this was before I discovered that you could destroy disabled bots). A little while later, I heard a bot talking and figured that another one was wandering around. I followed the sound back to that room and one of the bots I'd disabled was active again. I've heard that the Dark Engine sometimes will stand zombies back up after you reload a save and I'd almost certainly used Quickload by then, so maybe it forgot the state of that bot. So when I disable a combat bot, I like to smash them just so there's no chance of the game re-activating them. Also, it's pretty satisfying to wreck them. :)

As for other enemies seeing the pieces; When you smash a bot, you're left with a boiler you can pick up and a lot of little pieces that you can't pick up, but which you can push somewhat. Over time, all those little pieces vanish, leaving only the boiler. Just like how blood eventually vanishes over time. I don't know what rationale you could come up with for the parts disappearing though. So I suppose if you smash a bot, then hide the boiler and wait for the parts to vanish, there's no evidence that you were there. Of course with all the noise you make breaking it apart, any enemies nearby have probably already heard you.



I think if they walk directly over it, it disables them (counts as being destroyed I think) but if they just walk past the side, they only catch some of the explosion.

I've had that happen also, where it takes two mines to knock out a bot. Other times I've put a mine in front of a bot compartment, let the camera see me and the mine disables two bots. In Soulforge, there's a long hallway that leads to a large, dark room with a walkway up above. Just inside the door to the left is a bot-garage (unlike most, it's actually a structure inside the room) with two combat bots and a spider bot inside. I placed one mine, set off the alarm and the mine destroyed them both, although the spider bot survived to chase me. If you use my save, it's the area where the annoying mech cherub hangs out. You'll see two combat bot boilers inside. The boiler for the spider bot is in the "tank" room where I crushed it with the elevator. :)

Also, in a room I called the "trench" room because there's a large trench running down the center with lava at the bottom, is a bot compartment with a phantom bot inside. It looks normal, there's smoke coming out of the exhaust pipe and everything, but it doesn't really exist. You can walk right through it. I've read that the only way to destroy it is with splash damage, but I don't think I had anything left to use on it. It doesn't react to anything anyway, so I just left it alone. There was a real bot that comes out of this compartment and it's not big enough to hold two of them, so it's just a strange bug.