Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - N8 28-Apr-2024 Labyrinthus Noctis

[RSSwizard]

It's not supposed to be this way. You can rush to recruit 'hands' if you need more cannon fodder.

Much like vanilla it is pretty easy to reset early on.

The toughest early missions for those hands will probably be Ratman Rodeos, because ratmen often carry flintlocks and they do enough damage to put you down. If you have to, skip a rodeo, they mostly provide apples which you cant use for several months. With temple missions its easy to die given the hardware used, but at least you know where the danger is.

Lokknarr missions are easier - sky ninjas are rough but there's only 4 of them and melee is the best way to take them out.

I suggest selling your radar facility as soon as the game starts to avoid annoying traffic popups (most are civilian), and get a nice money bonus (buy extra brainer?). Better just do missions and wait until you get Overcharged Radar before starting the air game, it should float you until then.

[Solarius Scorch]

I am 99% sure it will be easier to hire new hands in the next release.

[Eddie]

I suggest selling your radar facility as soon as the game starts to avoid annoying traffic popups (most are civilian), and get a nice money bonus (buy extra brainer?). Better just do missions and wait until you get Overcharged Radar before starting the air game, it should float you until then.

Thats not good advice. You can get your extra brainer at the start by selling the corridor and some hellerium. You need the radar to detect the Academy nurses Airbus that is searching for you. They are a guaranteed mission that will land near your base. These Nurses are lightly armed and give good money when you capture them. They give you cattle prods, stun batons, mini las-chargers and varmint rifles.
You loose a lot when you sell your radar and don't do these missions.

You can also get lucky with landed UFOs early on. I had a military transpot mission in the 3rd month near my base. Three of these are guaranteed to land, one of them the transport. I had government crew, which give about 1 mil in ransom (jack sparrow crew size). The plastasteel, ship engine and hellerium is another 1 mil. So these three landed craft gave me about 6 mil in total, plus the military goodies.

I think in month 4 there is also a guaranteed recon mission near your base. These UFO's will also land. Radar is not about air game, it's about landed UFOs. Landed UFOs is where the big money is.

[Ethereal_Medic]

I wasn't aware the pocket las-charger and varmint rifles are now T0 equipment for those very early missions.
Aside from the minimal damage they can provide, the las-charger looks like a fancy solution for:
"Damn got not enough pistols, guess I'll give this pee-shooter a good rub instead." and even reserve ammo (and money)
The varmint rifle, as far as it works the same way the sporting rifle does in X-Files, seems good enough to offer a very precise gun for your best shooter until you can lay your hands onto a real weapon.

I sell the corridor instantly. In my current campaign (rank 3 difficulty) I went for a third brainer after my first 2 landed academy 'airbus' and invested into more runts to produce moonshine and additional canteens of refreshment. On the old patch the nurses had only muskets and old revolvers at best. I ambushed them during the night to get more value out of my superior night-vision.
It's also much easier to rush them during the night for man-handling them with the handle.

With the 2nd barracks in build I go for Jacktown research to get the first market-upgrade and buy decent revolvers and 6 uber-clothings to have better inventory options and +1 camo for night missions.
If I can't fill my airbus with at least 5 gals (+ parrot sometimes) I hire hands or those shipwrecked gals you get for fighting the brothel-mission and random during distress calls and 'blood rituals'. The latter takes some months to spawn and until that point you have 'better' guns or even 1-2 grav harness to entirely f'em up and capture them.

Those landed military transports are indeed a blessing and the best loot to get early on is a mix of defender and defender (-) armor. Close to immunity to small arms fire in those blue suits.

Also lategame-related:
If you find yourself with plenty of spare money chilling around, invest in zaxx-token and exchange those for "Slave Manager".
You get 1x slave taskmaster for 500k investment. Sounds much, every new slave pulled out of thin air reduces your overall upkeep and offers vault-space. Since I'm pumping pure money with 4-factory bases (480 runts building m1a-tanks) I got some spare coins for that. I gamble that my overall upkeep drops to 0 and below eventually. Still 32millions every month, bunch of workers and salaries for runts/brainers and soldiers/tanks.

[cc]

If you find yourself with plenty of spare money chilling around, invest in zaxx-token and exchange those for "Slave Manager".
You get 1x slave taskmaster for 500k investment. Sounds much, every new slave pulled out of thin air reduces your overall upkeep and offers vault-space. Since I'm pumping pure money with 4-factory bases (480 runts building m1a-tanks) I got some spare coins for that. I gamble that my overall upkeep drops to 0 and below eventually. Still 32millions every month, bunch of workers and salaries for runts/brainers and soldiers/tanks.

For extra profit, buy Saya and then pimp out Guild Hostess. They pay for themselves after a year, much faster than Taskmasters do.
Even when combined with Workers to offset the space loss, they are insanely profitable. Expect some rebalancing soon.
Profitability is roughly 45 for Guild Hostess + 2 Workers, 17 for Drone Herder, 12 for Taskmasters from the bank, and 11 for Slave Robots.

[Ethereal_Medic]

I want the vault-space in the first place and get rid of all workers :3
This strategy looks good too.

[RSSwizard]

Thats not good advice. You can get your extra brainer at the start by selling the corridor and some hellerium.

Might just be where I put my base typically (Ural Mountains) but I almost never have landed UFOs that show up within radar range. Especially standard radar range.

Also until you can "turn off" the radar facility im always going to sell the thing right off the bat. Turning facilities off C&C style I think is a feature of the game at this point, but if you middle or right click on the radar it just goes to the bootypedia entry. I need to be able to shut that damn thing off, and then turn it on only when im looking for some ufos to chase (even if its maintenance cost monthly remains "on").

Going after civilian traffic is also worthwhile because of capturing Sharp Guys for sale. The negative infamy is more than made up for. Its just annoying that even civilian ships dont land that often... and then disappear.

For extra profit, buy Saya and then pimp out Guild Hostess.

Just remembered that workers only cost 10K up front, not per month (5K?), yeah I guess it would yield a profit.

Ive got a large vaults sitting at another base that I just throw my courtesans at, and when I start running low on space I go on a mass-producing spree. And I build power stations to put those ship engines to use (since you get them back if you sell it) so they stop taking up inventory space.

I wasn't aware the pocket las-charger and varmint rifles are now T0 equipment for those very early missions.

Pocket Las-Charger is a good way to get reaction fired on, and it does no damage to doors or scenery, about the only use is to shoot someone who's already panicked and disarmed themselves. Its one of those nerf guns that still poses a danger to you.
- And if you done run out of ammo you're not falling back on your FPS training by picking up someone else's weapon. Im not above grabbing a ratman's flintlock or a church neophyte's rusty niner.

Varmint Rifle is an excellent hole-bleeder. Its just as good as a scoped rifle or a battle rifle because folks will bleed and fall over. I love that thing, its only true replacement is the aforementioned because you get some armor pen with those.

Also what defines "Tier" in terms of equipment? There's so many shades of gray in this game for items that there must be a hundred tiers.

Brothel Missions

Yeahhh... about those. I know I get a free gal out of it but there's alot of firepower and those bandit boys are hard to melee. Alot of times ill just skip these missions because its too much of a pain to deal with them. I end up murdering the hell out of everything and getting all the negative infamy for it (negative points for ho's really? im cleaning up the streets... whatever)

This, if anything, is the mission I bring the Assault Cannon + Pyro Cannonballs with and just blow the crap out of the villa.

[Martin]

I just break ther wall near the porson with a hammer, tkae the gall and leave most of the time when doing brothel missions.

[RSSwizard]

I just break the wall near the prison with a hammer, take the gall and leave most of the time when doing brothel missions.

*smacks forehead*
uggh ive done this for other things, why dont I remember to do it for this kinda issue
and if you run into the Highwayman down there, I dont think he's a negative score kill either

[Eddie]

Might just be where I put my base typically (Ural Mountains) but I almost never have landed UFOs that show up within radar range. Especially standard radar range.

The nurse airbusses are guaranteed to show up near your base. They might not land in radar range, but it is almost impossible that none ever cross your radar covered zone. You need to order your airbus to follow them as soon as you see one flying. You can then follow them to their landing spot even if it is outside your radar. Did you not know that you can do that?

Also until you can "turn off" the radar facility im always going to sell the thing right off the bat. Turning facilities off C&C style I think is a feature of the game at this point, but if you middle or right click on the radar it just goes to the bootypedia entry. I need to be able to shut that damn thing off, and then turn it on only when im looking for some ufos to chase (even if its maintenance cost monthly remains "on").

Why would you want to turn it off? the maintenance is 7500, which is laughable.

Pocket Las-Charger is a good way to get reaction fired on, and it does no damage to doors or scenery, about the only use is to shoot someone who's already panicked and disarmed themselves. Its one of those nerf guns that still poses a danger to you.

The tu cost on that thing is so low, if you get reaction fired on you are playing wrong.
Concerning damage: It's a laser, which means it ignores 33% of armor. It can kill academy drones, even on jack sparrow. It is really useful for zombie missions or shambler hunts. You can't scavange guns and ammo from fallen enemies on these missions.
The pocket laser is also the 2nd most accurate early pistol, after the magnum. You can use it as a long range backup weapon on melee gals, where the 2x1 slots are usually filled with beer. The damage is enough to make an enemy bleed. If you are in no hurry, that is still a one hit kill.

This, if anything, is the mission I bring the Assault Cannon + Pyro Cannonballs with and just blow the crap out of the villa.

There are a lot of unarmed Hoes running around on these missions. They are easy to capture and sell for 7000. Capturing one is enough to pay one month of radar maintenance. The point of piratez is not to kill everything that moves...

[RSSwizard]

The nurse airbusses are guaranteed to show up near your base.
Why would you want to turn it off? the maintenance is 7500, which is laughable.
The pocket laser is also the 2nd most accurate early pistol, after the magnum.
There are a lot of unarmed Hoes running around on these missions.

They are guaranteed to Attack my base, which is okay with me.

I want to turn radar off to get rid of countless popups for shipping that I will not engage. I want to turn off the radar for the same reason that I put a popup blocker on my web browser - because im doing other stuff like missions or waiting for research/manuf to finish and I dont want to be bothered. The *stop targeting civilian traffic* research topic which you get much further down the road sorta makes an analogy to this.

(if there was any facility that ever needed to be turned off, it is the radar)

Im generally unwilling to follow shipping using the Airbus because of its short range... about 80% of the time they already landed before entering radar range or the Airbus cant follow them to where they will. I will follow shipping with the Aircar though. It reminds me of filling out job applications... which I have PTSD over in real life and is one of the conditions I am disabled for.

The pocket lascharger has a medium-range TU cost for snap shots (20%) and that is actually a really big deal because the damage is so low. The other benefits including the accuracy just do not help (ie, more of nothing is still nothing). I wont even use the Holdout Pistol, but I will use the Black Adder... for a little while. The regular 1x2 size lascharger pistol is redeemable because its as effective as other pistols.
(the 1x1 size doesnt mean much either, ill pack a snub revolver as backup, even if its only got 5 shots its enough to wait until I pick up another gun off of someone)

The only unarmed ho's ive seen on the villa mission are the ones that panicked and dropped their gun. They usually have a snub revolver, and they come equipped with Bad Touch (so they are never in fact unarmed), and it seems like a surprisingly high reactions based on the number of reaction fire attempts I get from them. I just wont put up with it, they get blown away quick with a shotgun or become collateral damage. And if im going to stun anyone its going to be Highwaymen because of their research topics.

[cc]

I want the vault-space in the first place and get rid of all workers :3
This strategy looks good too.

10 Taskmaster: 60 space and 60k profit for 5000k.
10 Courtesan and 35 Workers: 60 space and 75k profit for 3350k.

Even when going for space, running a brothel is the way to go.

[KZad Bhat]

RSSWizard, as far as the first Academy attack . . . in fact several runs, they always land in range of your Airbus. And by several runs I mean that first bus is not the one that attacks you, at least 2 will run before they hit your base. If you get them, you'll manage to kill/capture more, and get more stuff. I've taken as many as 5 buses at the start of a game, before the first month is even out.

As far as the RADAR bother . . . I would like to see a feature where you can set it to ignore a particular craft. After all, if I haven't gone after it the first time it comes in view, I'm probably not going at it again later.

[Ethereal_Medic]

10 Taskmaster: 60 space and 60k profit for 5000k.
10 Courtesan and 35 Workers: 60 space and 75k profit for 3350k.

Even when going for space, running a brothel is the way to go.

I'm not a huge fan of number-crunching. I can certainly see that this is very useful for 'speedrunning' the mod, yet I'm still not a fan of hiring more workers to bridge the space needed for the courtesan.
Timewise my option is 'faster' since I can produce 1 taskmaster/hour as far as I can manage to sustain 50tokens/hour.
Every 24h I can produce 24 taskmasters for a whooping investment of 12M $.
I could go for 48 taskmasters/day but 24M $/day is a tad too much for my/any economy.

You (as a very helpful number-crunsher), did you considered the 'production-cost' to turn a hostess into a courtesan?
Is the monthly upkeep for the workers counted in? How long does it take to produce 40x courtesan?
You have 450 runts at one base with 1 cryo-prison.


--- posts merged. Seriously? ---

At the topic of 'tiers' I simply run the idea like this but it's more focused onto the research tree itself:
T0 = everything usable even without research (this counts for quite alot of things)
T1 = What to do?
T2 = Back to School
T3 = School Graduation
T4 = Higher Studies
Those are the crucial topics you've to work for to proceed into the high-tech weapon and armor arsenal.
I spent a good year on T2 to get as many research topics done and 8 bases before I went for T3 and reshaped all my hideouts to replace the large barracks with luxury barracks. Also 4x factories together with armory towers :3

[cc]

You (as a very helpful number-crunsher), did you considered the 'production-cost' to turn a hostess into a courtesan?
Is the monthly upkeep for the workers counted in? How long does it take to produce 40x courtesan?
You have 450 runts at one base with 1 cryo-prison.

Production time is lower (100 hours for Guild Hostess --> Courtesan vs. 125 hours for 5 x Zaxx + 1 Zaxx --> Taskmaster). I didn't factor in production cost itself originally, which would move things to 5010k vs. 3450k. The numbers get slightly closer, but Courtesans are still the better option.
Monthly upkeep was factored in, of course.
40 Courtesans can be produced in 40 * 100 / 450 ~ 9 hours. You can currently "overbuy" prisoners, but 40 is the official limit - and since that brings you to a total of 13 800 k if you want equivalent space to 40 Taskmasters or 13 575 k for a space neutral setup, you're unlikely to be able to consistently reach 40.