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76

XPZ Strategy/Tactics / Re: Extended Piratez general FAQ/Strategy Guide

« on: May 07, 2020, 08:34:59 pm »

I haven't played the original much so don't have baseline to compare. Could you tell me if attached save has some glaring flaws?

You can reread last 2 pages, everything said there can be applied to your save (i.e no brainers, no runts, no additional bases approaching the end of the year). The only difference is that you are doing tactical fights much better.

notably:
I spent a few months with low score cos everyone was wounded.

use backup teams. You want to spread freshness and wounds over multiple groups. You want multiple bases with ship to be able to reach landed ships in time, usually people go for "current dropship capacity"*2 in secondary bases and 3-4 times in the main one (losing the lab is more or less = losing the game).

Freshness you can recover by like 9/day with onsen, which means you can do 9 turns/day. It's 2-3 short missions with godly gals, but once per 2 days for bad ones.
Wounds you can eventually start to recover faster, but you need medicine researched.
Both of those recover options you couldn't get because your research speed is slow - not enough brainers.

I'd like to mass produce platemail but couldnt even find it under research.

Platemail takes ~year to get with 20 brainers, you have 6, you will get in in 3 years.
You were close to getting chainmail, but you still didn't research warehouse wars, mission which gives guild stapler, bottleneck for durathread working ->workshop->chainmail.
!topics! will unlock new missions, new loot and new enemies to interrogate.
You want blowfish ship for underwater ones and at least x-bows.
underground - recruit lokknars.

I know i need to invest in a craft with weapons but no idea what to buy since whenever i tried it craft just died horribly.

You need to focus on interrogations of non-faction people to get "shadowmasters" topic. Experiment victim, Hoes, drifters, savvy girls and sharp guys... you can mouse wheel click and see if a person can give it for free. It will unlock codex crafts, they will be your backbone for a long time.
You got red codex, scorpion will be a great dropship, snake will be fine intercepter - it has shield and can use any weapon you find.
To get weapons you need to interrogate highwayman, it unlocks 2 missions, one of them guarantees aircraft weapon loot. Undersea missions give sonic oscillator, amazing anti-civilian weapon.

To purchase weapons you need to invest into bounty hunting, rockets and 30mm cannon is there. Alternatively, with a snake the fastest gun to get is from "contacts:rogue field warlords", it gives ramjet cannon, you need to get rogue field from interrogation and research slavery.

before engaging check how ship looks - green ones and ambulance can't shoot back, you can down such ships with anything.
You can pile up multiple ships to intercept a single one by intercepting your own ship.

+
which armor to wear against forces of evil? I can kill em just fine but fireball spam kills troop morale.

You need environmentally sealed armors, heavy suit, iirc the first one.

I dont get some of the weapons. I spent so much effort on clockwork gun and its nowhere near spikey smg. Some seems to be clearly superior, which ones to go for?

I'd say clockwork gun is something you take from your belt slot when you are going in melee and accidentally see academy drone 2-3 tiles above the ground.
Personally, I don't see any use for spikey whatsoever, people who die to it can be stunned in one hit.
What guns to go for is sooo subjective... Some people love bows due to arc + huge bonuses from gal stats. Some like shotguns for "never miss" accuracy. Some just want to see the world burn.
My fav training weapon is domestic shotgun with rubber slugs, it leaves victims alive.

like stun baton/handle/ball bat, which one works best?

handles start to kill people when you have moderately trained gals, so usually I start with handles, then switch to batons, and carry cattle prods on missions where I expect guys able to resist top roll of a baton (elite soldiers with 80+ armor don't take damage from 0-60 stun baton)

How exactly bonus xp from gym/sailor suit work?

When you get exp, it makes secondary stats grow faster.

Where can i get some hats?

research luxury fur. oh right, you didn't research monster hunt. Nowhere.

77

XPZ Strategy/Tactics / Re: Extended Piratez general FAQ/Strategy Guide

« on: May 07, 2020, 05:27:20 pm »

You can't go bankrupt if you invest.
Runts literally print money.
My save at the start of feb 2602, month behind you:

800 runts making simple grog do 12.8M per month, my maintenance of all bases combined is 8M.
every base has 3 extractors + workshop + still + some hangars

Brainers are crucial:

"research score" is taken from the save game, it's what brainers generate when they complete research.
Couple point:
1. You can see on the graph exact moment where I got interceptors, my score went by +5k.
I had full lab in the second month, it took me 8 months to get there.
You have half the lab, it would take you 16 months. Simple math.
2. Fully staffed lab generates more score than a bunch of hands doing every mission. Like, my Jan score - 12k from brainers, 4k from hands. and 12k score from brainers = 4 millions of infamy money.


Where you can improve tactically:

STOP KILLING CIVILIANS.


It's comparison between how you play and what I did with your savegame.
Drifter stunned with a shotgun didn't die because I use rubber bullets.

1 point of infamy gives $333 at the end of the month.
In the trade guild warehouse you didn't get 100 points from captures = you will not get 33k bonus at the end of the month
Temple of Sirius briefing literally says that you get a penalty for killing civvies. And you go and kill them. -40 points. You lose the game when you get negative points. You could get 200+ infamy there, you lost 40. 280 difference*333= 90k loss. Priest you killed worth 60k alive and 2k dead.

78

XPZ Strategy/Tactics / Re: Extended Piratez general FAQ/Strategy Guide

« on: May 06, 2020, 02:37:03 am »

Also i'm gonna extarct and sell the food the local paesant gave me as tribute, it is supposed to be done that way?

Food currently is unfinished feature, more or less. Most of it doesn't even have a bootypedia page. Farm talks about uber wheat being an explosive, for example. Personally, I just sell all food items when I get too many items in the storage, changing runt jobs back and forth not worth my time, game gives enough money to not minmax SO much.

OK, in the meantime finally interrogated an highwayman

so, half of a february is down the drain, lab and workshop is still understaffed, nothing being built on the base, and you lost 6 gals. I'd say missing highwayman is the smallest problem there.

and manufactured a carronade, which sadly cannot be mouted on airspeeder but got the spike rockets so who cares?

Expensive things which can overkill civilian ships into not leaving a wreck to raid? Nobody, really.

Built also some nice air muskets but still searching for a standard weapon (auto rifle, assault rifle and battle would be fine though i researched these but cannot buy still)

All of those weapon can barely scratch 30 armor guys, as a rule of thumb such enemies usually have weapons which can barely scratch your 30 armor gals, so it's better to not even bother and stun them for cash reward. And enemies which will die from 30 damage guns you better take alive anyway. You can use domestic/police shotgun with rubber slugs for 20 daze damage.

but an enemy hideaout has appearde, im tempted to assault it, don't know.

1. Your ships suck. Enemy bases have radar circle, when you cross it - enemies intercept you. Your ships aren't able to even reach it without being intercepted.
2. with what army?
3. You have 2 bases, actually.

And by the way still not encountered spartans and raiders, the latters being more common i guess?

Oh, you had raiders. They killed your gals in missions landing-10 and landing-13.
Spartans... I had a game where I haven't seen them until well into year 2, though it was in the version without Prepper camp mission (it's either ruffians or spartans by my experience).

79

XPZ Strategy/Tactics / Re: Extended Piratez general FAQ/Strategy Guide

« on: May 05, 2020, 12:06:01 pm »

You were told to hire brainers multiple times, have 1.5M and and 9 empty labs. You haven't fixed anything.
Use save from this message. https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,4102.msg126866.html#msg126866

80

XPZ Strategy/Tactics / Re: Extended Piratez general FAQ/Strategy Guide

« on: May 04, 2020, 01:11:50 pm »

For your own sake consider that you can't get anywhere without repeated interrogations of every single being.
Construction of any relevant ship is gated behind Shadowmasters (doesn't drop as an item, you get it from interrogations and some rare books) ->Codex crafts-> Shadowtech ->cloaking device-> Interceptor assembly ->everything else.
Take, for example, enemy you should've interrogated in the first month:

"Leads to" is a hard dependency. Because you didn't research him ever you never got 2 missions.
Highway house, iirc - guaranteed spawn of aircraft weapon. You can check gal diaries in my save, in ~40 days I got 7 downed civilian missions (6 done, 1 crash site is ready to go), Imagine if you did the same 7-8 months ago? 50+ ufo with 100k engines...
Bandit business - I think unlocks bandit town mission, very fun as it has like 30+ enemies, it's ton of ransom money, weapons and researches.
"Gives one for free". 13/41 means that you can research him 41 times and it would give additional tech each time, 13 times left (thanks meridian for this counter).
For example, he can tell about smugglers.

And it's the only thing which stops you from getting acquainted with smuggler shop.

I love hallucinogen grenades, they make enemies surrender and panic. Laslock pistol is quite good with admiral outfit, though you already proved that can't read what admiral outfit does.
Smugglers themselves is a dependency for diplomacy and interrogations.

81

XPZ Strategy/Tactics / Re: Extended Piratez general FAQ/Strategy Guide

« on: May 04, 2020, 03:41:27 am »

  Man, you are so dense. You have 1.5M and you were told to hire brainers. Maybe try to hire brainers? Or, I don't know, hire brainers?
You haven't done anything to salvage the game during january, like hiring brainers.
I used your older save and played Jan myself:
First thing I did is I rummaged through your warehouse (god, it's so empty), sold expedition, bought aircar, bolted 25mm cannon and first vessel crashed.

Aaand I hired brainers
went to some bounty hunt

temple of sirius

One enemy spawned in inacessible location, at least I got experience while searching for it

Some demons visited us with unfriendly intentions:

Anyway, holy crap, man you are pirate, You should take hostages to get booty. Why you didn't take a single hostage in 50 missions FFS?!
Here, proper ships gated behind researching hostages:

Leave you with a proper Boss Gal.

Things I did:
1. Gamble. You should regularly gamble and reclaim coupons. I've won a lottery with a longsword, it's a pretty obscure dependency for tech blade (you will see it already equipped, this baby can slash tank in half)
2. Hiring brainers. As a result in one month I got access to better armors, better melee weapon, purchasable ammo for ship guns, ship gins and ships.
3. Taking hostages. Look at your prison, it is no longer a sandbox for random freak.
4. Invested into buildings. Your base now looks like a base.
5. And populated it.
Things I didn't do:
1. I didn't unlock new mission types. Bounty hunt grade C is in queue, you might do it right away, they aren't much harder than D in most cases.
2. I didn't build a second base.
Things you should prioritize:
1. Build second base with at least 2 hangars. You want to move empty airbus there (there would be a mission where airbus is the best transport, plus nostalgia), and buy shadowbat for your main team. Second hangar should get Golden Hawk. Bolt that funky heavy gun you got from codex into it, should be quite powerful.
2. I'm making spiked maces, it's quite good weapon against armored targets, put them in the main vessel. Next item you will want to make is thermal mesh, which is being researched. It goes into wear slot and helps against plasma damage. Quite good.
3. Get overcharged radar, delete your old one
4. research wise - after medicine rush sickbay (I made sure to leave enough supplies to build one straight away), you will start to recover faster and will be able to hire another brainer. Chew through people, some of them have "metal ore", it's a prerequisite for alchemy (lets you build still in other bases, it's a prerequisite for mess hall, brainer!). Better ships are locked behind "Ship engine" tech. You could've gotten it by now if you didn't kill everyone in "traitors at large" mission, traitor mutants know some cool techs. It might be worth buying one for researching.

82

XPZ Strategy/Tactics / Re: Extended Piratez general FAQ/Strategy Guide

« on: May 03, 2020, 06:53:24 pm »

Or even lower difficulty again? (which i don't wanna)

To my knowledge first difficulty makes the game harder by disabling some researches, second one is intended, then the higher you go, the easier the game becomes because you get more enemies on missions = more exp and loot, but you aren't utilizing money you get well enough at all.

Or should use more paesant "cannon fodder" militia?

You should use more people who tell you about shiny things and more people who can make those shiny things.

Pheraps because i have a defensive playstyle?

I have no idea what you imply under "defensive playstyle". Your base doesn't have antiair defense, your girls don't have personal defense, your ships don't have any means of selfdefense.
You don't have a single veteran girl (ok, I will be fair, 2 almost there),
from my December save:

I have 14 people like that. They literally can punch through tank armor.

You don't have a playstyle, you are losing the game again. You had -4k score, enemies got a base (reading though save it's Mercenaries/Mutons, they have gauss and plasma, you will not be able to assault it, your troops, armor and ships suck), jan 2602 is the month where game starts to generate space missions with penalty for not attending (you don't have space capable ship), enemies start to use plasma, training missions become scarce, simple animal hunts start to contain nomads with dragon rifles (50+ damage) and hunting laser (45) or ninja gals with boarding guns. More and more enemies will have interceptor behavior.
What you could do better:
1. not enough brainers, having empty lab is inexcusable.
2. you have light cannon in your storage, you could buy a simple aircar, strap the cannon and hunt civilians. Civilians can't shoot back(they are green. grey ships can and will shoot back). Every civilian ship is potential 200-300k (100k engine, some even have 2, 60k bag of cash, 2-4 captures for 30k each). For example, in my december save I have 60 downed ships *200k=12 millions. see, where you are missing funds to build bases?
3. you didn't have brainpower to research purchasable aircraft weapon and ammo.
4. your manufacturing sucks.
december, I sold 4200 units of grog alone for 21 million, out of apples for now, but still should be couple hundreds of chateau.

5. you don't take hostages. It's december and you still didn't get priest from church of sirius? Man, his head is 60k for alive one. Sharp guy is 40k. You are burying millions by killing civilians. You don't have handles in your default loadout or stun batons; if you want shooty things, domestic/police shotgun with rubber slugs is great.

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XPZ Strategy/Tactics / Re: Extended Piratez general FAQ/Strategy Guide

« on: May 02, 2020, 08:56:28 pm »

I was going to say that you are doing well for third month, and then I saw jan 2602.
The same errors like in previous playthrough - not enough brainers (why do you have free lab slots, WHY?!), not enough runts, not enough radar coverage.
You should've covered the world in bases by now.

84

XPiratez / Re: Stuff I'd love to see in XPiratez!

« on: May 02, 2020, 07:38:53 pm »

would be nice to see some more "lawmen": by now we have only military police: how about a "guild marshall" the equivalent of the team leadr but employed as a head of the escort troop in a vessel, or a "megapol sheriff" who leads small squads in megapol vans or cars?

Aside from military police govts deploy
Govt Agent (equivalent of the team leader) Govt Elite Soldier, Govt Enforcer, Govt Siren, Govt Pilot and Govt General, who uses power armor
Megapol has Megapol Detective, quoting his bootypedia page

Highly paid and extremely skilled operatives, employed by Megapol to lead manhunts. Sometimes they command whole hordes of Beastmen, but more often they work alone.

There's xpedia.bat in your game directory, use it.

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XPZ Strategy/Tactics / Re: Extended Piratez general FAQ/Strategy Guide

« on: May 02, 2020, 05:56:11 pm »

I'm not saying that they are useless, my point is that "how to get lasers" is a wrong question for this mod whatsoever. It has completely different progression and should be played as its own game.
Like, I do use lasers in my loadout, in 2 years I used them once against tanks in heavy freighter assault.

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XPZ Strategy/Tactics / Re: Extended Piratez general FAQ/Strategy Guide

« on: May 02, 2020, 12:17:45 am »

You should forget original x-com progression, you aren't "stuck with firearms and need laser".
In this mod progression looks like
start - medieval firearms + random loot
start of 1 year - modern firearms + random loot
start of 2 year - custom made firearms + custom made bullets + some random loot of different damage types with ammo you can make

You can rush laser, but items you will be able to unlock early will be weaker than handcannon (NERF pistol has 30 damage vs 42 +0.15 bravery, up to 57), I wouldn't even talk about lasers you can loot from academicians, they do like 15-20 damage.

87

XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: April 26, 2020, 05:05:15 pm »

you can "intercept" your own ships, so when this intercepted ship gets into a fight his escort would participate.

88

XPZ Strategy/Tactics / Re: Extended Piratez general FAQ/Strategy Guide

« on: April 16, 2020, 10:25:14 pm »

Cavern hunting doesn't need chitin plates to become available, and it produces chitin plates, get them there and then research them yourself. It is the most straightforward way.
From my experience 10 hunts generate enough for 3-4 armors.
Since cavern hunting usually becomes available in the same month as monster hunt, getting chitin plates from the latter would be delayed a lot compared to getting plates from runt job. (Like, I got my first scorpion hunt 4 months later after researching missions)

89

XPZ Strategy/Tactics / Re: Extended Piratez general FAQ/Strategy Guide

« on: April 16, 2020, 03:00:32 pm »

1. Buildings should be connected to access lift. If connection is destroyed, then the building is destroyed. Both top and bottom don't have redundancy and can be oneshotted.
2. Enemies during assault spawn in the hangar and access lift. Look at your lift - enemies can wander in 4 directions. You have seen my save, in my bases enemies can't wander to the left - there's the wall, and doesn't matter if they go to the top - there's a hangar.
3. You units spawn in the barracks - the farther you put it from the action, the worse it can get. People which will spawn in the burrow near extractor would take 3+ turns to reach access lift. Another moment - if things get unfortunate, units which spawned in the barracks to the left have nowhere to run away from enemies.
4. to my knowledge you want to have hangar + access lift in each base on every difficulty below superhuman to allow all enemies to spawn, and 2 hangars on superhuman. If you don't, you will have too many enemies for too little spawn points, they would start randomly spawn around the base.
5. Your equipment will spawn in the vault, which is to the right of the access lift. Imagine that you need rocket launcher ammo, and to get to it you need to run though enemies in access lift.

There are 2 common ways to build defensible base -
1.
row 1- Hangar - hangar - empty
row 2 - hangar-hangar-empty
row 3 - access lift - empty
row 4 - corridor - empty
row 5 - corridor - barracks.
This results in forcing enemies to walk long hallway with no cover so you can snipe them. Cons - unused space, to get to last enemies you will need to walk long hallway with no cover, usually sieges are pretty long because you constantly skip turns.
(being vertical isn't mandatory, you can mirror and/or flip layout)
2. Like in my save, surround enemy spawn point with barracks.
Your forces spawn close to enemies and you can do devastating blows on turn 1, while they haven't scattered yet, making them panic
con - enemies can get a ton of cover in prolonged firefights, though sieges longer than 5 turns usually those where last enemy is stuck somewhere and I'm skipping turns for bughunt mode.

Upgrading -

Building new facilities over obsolete buildings, like Plantations or Burrows, saves valuable time. When the new facility is small, full construction time of the old building will be subtracted; if 2x2, a quarter for each replaced building; if 3x3, one-ninth. Any refunds for the replaced facilities will be fully paid in any case.

Upgrading works on low tier living space and storage, all corridors, hangar, first prison and plantation.

90

XPZ Strategy/Tactics / Re: Extended Piratez general FAQ/Strategy Guide

« on: April 15, 2020, 02:37:48 pm »

So, new version warranted new restart, small recap of starting the game on the second difficulty with saves attached:
January - focus was missions + hiring brainers. grog researched, living space is filled with runts. (feb save)
February - Spamming burrows to increase living space, plus you can build on top of it, deducting cost and construction time. So, a barrack on top of a burrow would be finished in 2 days. (march save)
March - outfitted gals into scale armors (animal skinning ->cave hunt gives chitin plates), built a base, unlocked codex, so only Shadowmasters tech is blocking me from better ships. (april save)

Spoiler alert - I got shadowmasters in August after exhausting traitor smoothie. I'd recommend to prioritize second prison asap to save captives with shadowmasters unlock. Codex crafts are amazing.