Re: What difficultly level do you play one?

On Wed, 24 Jul 2024 17:54:55 -0400, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com>
wrote:

On Wed, 24 Jul 2024 08:24:18 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:
>

IIRC I used the weapon that let you hack people into fighting for you
extensively.  I don't remember if I ever played the expansion though.

>
The Persuadetron I think it was called.. or something like that.

You are correct.

The Persuadatron was an epic weapon. I'd usually spend the first half
of the mission just running around mesmerizing the populace. The more
people you persuaded, the more powerful the effect. If you brainwashed
ten civilians, you're Persuadatron became powerful enough to brainwash
police. With five police following you, you could brainwash enemy
agents.

The more powerful your agent's cyberbrain, the more effect the device
too.

It wasn't without risk, though. If you brainwash enemy agents, you
don't get to keep any of the weapons they'd normally drop after you
kill them. Selling those weapons were an early source of income in the
game. And you could softlock your game (or at least the mission) if
you brainwashed somebody you were supposed to kill.

[There was a trick around that, though. Have the agent with the
persuadatron get into a car. His brainwashed followers will all pile
into the car with him. Have your other agents shoot the car until it
blows up. Problem solved, albeit at the cost of an agent ;-]

Once you got enough civilians following you, you were almost
unstoppable. Sure, the civilians were initially unarmed but they'd
grab any dropped weapon they could get their hands on (brainwashed
police and agents came with their own guns, of course). Frail and
innaccurate as they were, twenty or thirty civilians could easily take
down an enemy agent on their own.

The Persuadatron was /such/ an effective tactic that later missions
nerfed it by having you run through missions with only a few (or
sometimes no) civilians.

Still, I remember being quite impressed at how well my PC could render
dozens of units on screen all at the same time. Pretty good for a 386.

("Syndicate" was also the first game I came across that used
DOS4GW.EXE, meaning it was possibly the first '32-bit' game I ever
played.)