OpenXcom Forum
Modding => Released Mods => XPiratez => Topic started by: Vesparco on December 26, 2016, 03:15:24 pm
-
Hi there,
After some playthrought (20h+) I thought it was the proper time to start giving feedback. Also, I was interested into knowing other player's experience in the current state of the game.
The reason for this also is that I have the feeling I am on the road to losing the game and I would like to know the experience of the veterans to assess the situation.
How it begins:
- Black beard difficulty. Central base in the black sea in Europe (I feel is the most centralised point to have reach with the Airbus). With the first rewards I raise numbers of brainers up to 5 in order to speed up things. New missions are fun to play.
Very pleasant surprises:
- You don't have an aquarium. Your live fish have died (aquatic missions are quite fun).
- Temple raid full of zombies ( luckily the map was open and I brought a machine gun on the ship).
How it evolved:
- Expansion bases in America and south America. Starting with barracks and extractor to push the economy. Later an outpost. Later a large barracks and workshop on America.
- The main base gets bigger. Workshop,Large barracks, Large vaults and a new hangar for the Aircar.
- The number of brainers is raised to 8 and then to 10 to achieve a balanced economy (not a blooming one).
Where I am now:
- 5-6 Months in the game.
- Boarding guns and Linux SMG is the bare bone of the firepower.
- Changed the turtle for the airbus. airbus sent to america but not in use.
- Metal armor is about to finish, interceptor assembly is arriving and also the still (miracles of basic engineering&tinkering).
- I have found an academy base in steel pact.
The feeling:
- The shipping's have raised considerably in size and firepower, the speeds at which they move are far superior to my vessels. I assume it is my fault of not pursuing a better coverage of the map (specially since I delayed the overcharged radar) as I feel that the optic was to engage on land.
- The base raid is unfeasible. 9 gals vs a base with gauss tech and psionics is quite impossible. I thought of using camo armor to increase the reactions in order to "kill before getting killed" but my gals are quite unexperienced for the task.
- I am confused on behalf economy vs research. My approach was maybe too research-focused, but I feel somewhat low in the tech department. Also the economy is difficult to push due to the lack of technology to support it (Destilling helerium with 20/50 runts), which makes me think that I should have expanded to world covegare before getting more than 5 brainers.
- Airspeeder is a must to the main base as it shut downs the preys for the airbus (and also because you can put into motion the seagulls quickly). In remote bases aircar is better to scavenge as many civilian crafts as possible.
- I experienced a lot of stationary missions (which are great) but I haven't been able to intercept many faction ships. Some guild runabouts and raiders only.
Bugs:
I believe the assault of the tower has a tile bug in which the door is blocked by a robot. If you bring something to take it down you can enter, otherwise you can't.
Things I would add (if feasible):
- directional illumination (same as vision or narrower). This would enable the use of torchlights, dedicated outfits and maybe weapon add-ons using the blessings of the duct tape. Running around with the mag-lite is cool but somehow silly after some months.
- Illumination in enemy bases. For aliens was understandable but for human faction is somehow weird. In combination with the gauss weaponry makes me think you have to exploit an alternative way of armors (night ops, smokey, camo...). Not sure if it is the objective.
Things I would like to see:
- Raider thugs as "fast, cheap HWP". Just to fill the gaps of the airbus/turtle when sickbay is throwing a party with 3/4 of the gang there. Parrots don't do the trick.
-
The tower assault robot is not a bug. It is intended for the door to be blocked. It's even mentioned in the briefing screen that you need to bypass the robot, you even get a hint that it explodes. Going through the tower wall with a hammer is what i normally do.
Expanded coverage does help but getting into air combat is pretty hard. And somewhat unnecessary for a fairly long time. Landed craft and the missions like temple raids and such are more then sufficient to occupy the gals and the brainers for long periods. I would even venture to say you could manage to complete the campaign without building anything but your menace craft and the Conqueror. Beyond that just having the capacity to efficiently handle anything more then a gunboat is either an exceptionally expensive multi craft setup or end game tech. Alot of this stems from the new ufo armor sharply limiting light slots ability to finish what missiles start. Heavy slots are next to useless for a very long period of the game because you dont have anything besides 105 rockets and the naval gun, until you have nuke lasers or plasma tech. This leaves missiles to do the lifting which means lots of slots.
You do need some sort of massive jackpot(mansion, gold transport) to really get off the ground economy wise. The early loot is just not sufficient to give the player the opportunity to easily expand given the premium on establishing new bases. And the problem is that 3-4 bases are needed to have room for all the things that need to happen in a game, plus tracking bases. New craft are also expensive in time and cash, and the more craft you add the more pilots you need, which means less barracks space for industry.
All told the present version is much more fun and smoother to play but it takes years more of game time to get to the same point. My first win took me about 3 game years and like 400 hours. Now im 5 years and 700 hours in on a different playthrough and only now getting into late game.
-
- I am confused on behalf economy vs research. My approach was maybe too research-focused, but I feel somewhat low in the tech department. Also the economy is difficult to push due to the lack of technology to support it (Destilling helerium with 20/50 runts), which makes me think that I should have expanded to world covegare before getting more than 5 brainers.
- Airspeeder is a must to the main base as it shut downs the preys for the airbus (and also because you can put into motion the seagulls quickly). In remote bases aircar is better to scavenge as many civilian crafts as possible.
The X-Grog is available from one of the four starting research items and already a better option than Hellerium. Once you have apples you can easily make even more profit.
Missiles are far too expensive to use IMHO, so the airspeeder is a bad option. There is some other fast vessel available early on that can use a single light weapon, which is sufficient for civilian craft.
Both these things help your economy.
-
There is a very early game tech which gives you a much more profitable export than hellerium.
Attack dogs already exist for your imagined fast, cheap HWP role. They're good melee fighters and utterly expendable. Problem is that the auxiliary capacity of your transport is limited.
Maglights are no longer necessary once you get good ranged flame weapons and nightvision equipment. Directional lighting would be nice, but we should appreciate that the lighting in the game has come a very long way in the last few versions.
Base raid with 9 gals is only unfeasible if you're trying to pull it off with crap like Linux SMGs. You're still at the point where gals armed with mostly melee weapons will outperform gals all armed with guns, especially against armored enemies. With a team of gals with melee weapons, and a few powerful looted ranged weapons and armors if you're lucky enough to find them, an early game base raid is possible.
-
The X-Grog is available from one of the four starting research items and already a better option than Hellerium. Once you have apples you can easily make even more profit.
Missiles are far too expensive to use IMHO, so the airspeeder is a bad option. There is some other fast vessel available early on that can use a single light weapon, which is sufficient for civilian craft.
Both these things help your economy.
Yes, I know this stuff. The only inconvenient is that is centralised on the main base as it is the only one with a Still on it (and I've seen that the tech comes quite later). This gets a little more complicated if you want to host the lab and the muscle within the same base.
The only way I think I could overpass this is to quickly de-centralize the "strike team" from the main base in order to start spamming extractors in order to have a sizeable workforce of brewers. A satellite base with vaults and containment could serve as buffer for the main base.
There is a very early game tech which gives you a much more profitable export than hellerium.
Attack dogs already exist for your imagined fast, cheap HWP role. They're good melee fighters and utterly expendable. Problem is that the auxiliary capacity of your transport is limited.
Maglights are no longer necessary once you get good ranged flame weapons and nightvision equipment. Directional lighting would be nice, but we should appreciate that the lighting in the game has come a very long way in the last few versions.
Base raid with 9 gals is only unfeasible if you're trying to pull it off with crap like Linux SMGs. You're still at the point where gals armed with mostly melee weapons will outperform gals all armed with guns, especially against armored enemies. With a team of gals with melee weapons, and a few powerful looted ranged weapons and armors if you're lucky enough to find them, an early game base raid is possible.
I take note of the flamethrower. I have already researched one but I don't know if I can buy ammunition. I have to check also if burning arrows do the trick.
Concerning the melee. While effective is kind of tricky. Untrained gals suffer the most at low TU and Stamina. Reaction gauss fire is also a common way of early retirement. Then psionic attacks usually position your troops in bad places. Maybe with smoke it could be feasible but I believe I don't have the tech yet. Nothing is imposible, but you need the luck on your side XD.
Concerning the tech tree, I am really happy with the evolution. As you said the pace is quite smoother and fun to play. One thought that I have is that I've been going sideways in the tech tree instead of going up (researching weapons, interrogations and such before going into the key technologies ). It may be more effective to reach the "reasonable" top before branching sideways (wich I believe is before researching "*Mutan alliance*", considering you want to have optional the mutant progroms).
-
Early on, economy is probably your most important resource - you can buy some really great weapons from the blackmarket - you just need to cash on hand. On my current play-through I had a devastating financial hit early on - but I've managed to pull through and get ahead of the curve because I've been focusing on mt manufacturing capacity pretty much straight up.
-
Afaik first order of things is to be able to afford 15 brainer.
And Shnapps de Mort (or whatever it is called) helps a lot with this.
-
Afaik first order of things is to be able to afford 15 brainer.
While this is what experienced players do, I believe this advice is a bit misleading. The truth is, there is little pressure in the game; you can in fact finish it with just 1 Brainer, only it'll take you dozens of in-game years.
There are basically two things that are absolutely necessary:
1) Don't go bankrupt.
2) Don't allow your points go negative too often.
These are hard lose conditions; fail here and you're done.
Naturally, to succeed you should also pay attention to other goals, like: having gals experienced enough to do more difficult missions (which will give you more points and money), doing research reasonably fast (because it gives points, helps make money and and gives you better combat gear). These are "soft" conditions though, meaning you don't lose the game if you fail to meet them, only meeting hard limitations will become harder.
Piratez is actually a very hard game to lose. The only way to actually lose it, barring failing the two "hard" conditions, is to lose your last base to a Crackdown. But if you don't shoot down ships, you won't get any Crackdowns unless much later in the game.
-
I wouldn't advise spamming extractors.
While extractors are one of the very early-game ways to scale up your economy, they certainly are not a fast or efficient way to do it. There are better options available long before the extractor + runts + barracks can even get close to earning back their initial costs.
X-grog is a decent money maker. So it is probably worth getting a few workshops running alongside the still. A second still in another base is often a worthwhile investment as well. The still is only an early game money maker. More lucrative manufacturing options will come up later on; but it is a decent stop-gap option. (And although x-grog is only really good for the early game, Chateau de le mort is always pretty good - so it's useful to have a still for that.)
Regarding having the still in the main base, I think you'll find that it's useful to have the still + workshops there, regardless of what the base's focus is. It's useful to have a lot of workshop space in your main assault base, because you need to be able to process the enslaving and extraction spoils of your raids; and its useful to be able to manufacture the weapons and armour you need directly in the base, rather than shipping materials and products backwards and forwards.
And if the original base is just a research base, you need the still anyway, because it's a prerequisite building for study rooms.
--
For the early game, it's tempting to think that investing in manufacturing is the best option for expanding your economy; but I believe that's actually a bit of a trap. I think you'll find that you get a far far faster pay-off from instead increasing your ability to do more ground missions. That means hiring more hands, getting longer range craft and craft weapons, and getting a radar in a second base. If you can shoot down civilian shipping, then that will pay for itself much faster than x-grog manufacturing.
-
I wouldn't advise spamming extractors.
For the early game, it's tempting to think that investing in manufacturing is the best option for expanding your economy; but I believe that's actually a bit of a trap. I think you'll find that you get a far far faster pay-off from instead increasing your ability to do more ground missions. That means hiring more hands, getting longer range craft and craft weapons, and getting a radar in a second base. If you can shoot down civilian shipping, then that will pay for itself much faster than x-grog manufacturing.
So you say but craft interception is a very long research path. You can build extractors and have them crank out flaming arrows (The best non-still item in the early game) in a month. May be slow to pay off, but the effect of having 6 extra bases with vaults + barracks cannot be underestimated.
There is a very early game tech which gives you a much more profitable export than hellerium.
Attack dogs already exist for your imagined fast, cheap HWP role. They're good melee fighters and utterly expendable. Problem is that the auxiliary capacity of your transport is limited.
Maglights are no longer necessary once you get good ranged flame weapons and nightvision equipment. Directional lighting would be nice, but we should appreciate that the lighting in the game has come a very long way in the last few versions.
Base raid with 9 gals is only unfeasible if you're trying to pull it off with crap like Linux SMGs. You're still at the point where gals armed with mostly melee weapons will outperform gals all armed with guns, especially against armored enemies. With a team of gals with melee weapons, and a few powerful looted ranged weapons and armors if you're lucky enough to find them, an early game base raid is possible.
Don't attack dogs require the Mutant Alliance, which means pogroms are mandatory?
-
So you say but craft interception is a very long research path. You can build extractors and have them crank out flaming arrows (The best non-still item in the early game) in a month. May be slow to pay off, but the effect of having 6 extra bases with vaults + barracks cannot be underestimated.
Flame arrows sounds quite cheeky :3. I'll have to check.
Checking the craft in the bootypedia (if the info is not outdated), I believe the best course of action is to reach the pachyderm. It is the fastest accessible vehicle, if choosing the proper research, that is a well round-up. Also it seems to enable the use of most of the armament gained with the drill (in my case, the flamethrower). That should level up fairly the air combat until you can push a proper industry for craft and missiles.
One surprise is that the spy zeppelin can carry 20 people. Seems the way to go for my base assault.
I wouldn't advise spamming extractors.
While extractors are one of the very early-game ways to scale up your economy, they certainly are not a fast or efficient way to do it. There are better options available long before the extractor + runts + barracks can even get close to earning back their initial costs.
I would like to disagree on that (at least until I can proper make the calculations). My idea is to spam extractors within the initial base. The extractor costs 350k, is already available and enables 20 runts. The workshop costs 800k and gives room to 30 and needs research. Then I should check also the refunds & maintenance for each one in order to evaluate the return of costs and profitability.
This approach enables 3 things:
- Push the production of X-Grog early on.
- Accelerate notably the production of Chateau de la Morte. While it doesn't give more money, you are able to expend it earlier (let's say in bases, which require time).
- A sizeable workforce for initial equipements (this one is a little bit flimsy but I would say cave hunting for scale armors as one example)
-
On economy:
If it's worth it to expand your workforce to make money depends on what you produce. I ran the numbers and found for grog, it's not worth it. You need to make and sell grog for nearly two month just to get your invested money back. And just after two month, you start making a profit. If you can make wine and have enough apples, then it's worth it to expand.
Worth or not worth depends on what else I can do with that money. More radar coverage gets you more shippings which is more money. Extractor, living quarters and 20 runts costs me about the same as hangar and pigeon or new base and radar. The radar is no foolproof investment though. You need to put it in a busy area and you need to be able to turn spotted shippings into money. You need an economic way to shoot down civilian shippings (aircar and 25mm cannon). If you have more skill, you get more money out of it (live captures etc.).
If you play it right, more radar coverage is a better investment to make money than runts.
Another thing: don't build large vaults in your main base. If storage is a problem, get slaves or put stuff in other bases.
-
On economy:
With latest versions, I'm thinking that the game is very close to a sweet spot. Early economy is mostly loot- and ransom/slavery-based. I've crunched numbers for possible manufacturing options - and indeed, as other people already said, they aren't really practical. You'll be looking at ~1 month building time, ~2 months for 100% RoI on a new base not including monthly expenses, and over 3 months with monthly expenses. And that's the even with the best early option (X-Grog). And of course this means that you're basically delaying your main base progress all the time.
I find it much more important to focus on tactical combat results and training gals so that you'll have your strong "core team". This allows you to cut your expenditure (less dead gals -> less expenses on recuits), have WAY more captures (100% capture rate on missions like Temple Raids is quite dangerous with newbies but extremely easy with experienced warriors), and tackle harder missions which give more loot. Researching all coin-related items allows you to start stockpiling some good coins so that later you can use those with Mint for great profits. Researching captures allows you to enslave those who are applicable, and slaves are required for some pretty good economy-boosting options that will come slightly later.
Expanding for radar coverage is decently viable as well, but doing it too early is ill-advised - it's quite pointless to expand unless you can capitalize on it reliably, and that requires an attack craft good enough for civilian traffic (Aircar is good, but Shark Jetbike is better, as it can easily get 100% interception rate on any civ traffic for very low Hellerium cost), a craft gun & ammo, and an experienced pilot to tackle those missions solo (sending your main team on very small civ crashes is an extreme overkill).
Not to mention that you don't really need to expand for radar coverage for purposes of winning or not losing the game. You'll definitely need more bases after a while due to base grid size limits, but there's not many reasons to speed up expansion just for the sake of it.
-
All of those approaches rely on getting a useable craft weapon with your ground assaults/ or interceptions with codex weapon of choice. If you get a bunch of parts, or ammo for different guns, you are SOL. The ROI on flame arrows may be bad, but you're trading an initial investment for a constant trickle of cash and easy expansion into workshops/stills etc.
-
You're actually losing money producing and selling Flame Arrows.
-
My advise:
-don't bother with the airgame, hunter-killers are crap, wait for better ships
-don't build large vaults, armored ones can be reached quite early
-once you have some basic guns, always assault landed ordinators
-get blue codex and go to space, the escape pod or how is ti called is suprisingly durable and can survive being pounded by zombies or shot by lasers
-
Ordinators have vicious security. With big guns and thick armor. So, if you really want to take on them, use heavy melee.
-
Govt enforcers aren't that hard to penetrate, I've seen them die to cannonballs. Elite soldier is tough, but there's one, maybe two in each ordinator.
-
Blue Codex?
-
You're actually losing money producing and selling Flame Arrows.
What? Access Lift + 2 corridor (a minor addition for later defense not needed) + barracks + vaults + extractor monthly maintenance is 37k. Twenty runts (the most an extractor can handle) monthly pay is 100k. Total monthly cost is 137k. Twenty runts making flame arrow's all month is 277k income. Roughly 140k a month. Unless the net fund field in the manufacturing view is completely wrong.
This leaves you with 5 barracks space, that leaves easy workshop + additional barracks addition for a full workshop + extractor of 50 runts at 697k per month with flame arrows.
When you get Still's even later on, yada yada.
The ROI on this is obviously garbage, however, it lays groundwork for future expansion into interception bases/stills etc really well and provides a steady influx of income. Also my interception RNG has been awful lately and this is a sure thing.
-
Ah right, they're produced in packs of 10, I missed that. That actually gives some paltry income :)
-
Some thoughts:
- X-Grog is a nice cost-coverer, and can help one get back into the game if he loses craft early on.
Research apples as soon as you get a decent stock and manufacturing capacity, then work on making some Chateau. When you are not making Chateau, make Grog. Never leave your runts idle. If they're not making gear, they should be making Grog or Chateau or the like. Other ways of getting apples: Ratman Rodeo, help the Lokk'Nars against Sky Ninjas, Warehouse Wars missions. I have also obtained apples from temple raid missions once or twice, I think it depends on the terrain.
- In my experience, Seagull missiles are too damn expensive to waste on civilian shipping.
- Get Warrior Armor. Junk is cheap. Its the first armor that gives you some real resistances. It slows down a soldier, but a good enough gal can deal with it. It has two niches: Sniper gals (who are not affected by TU and stamina malus because guns use %TU to fire, and get the accuracy bonus) and melee gals who are strong, fast and untiring enough to walk and sprint using Warrior Armor. It also makes Shotguns go from lethal to just annoying, and early on you will fight a lot of dudes with shotties.
- Get yourself some workers and slaves as soon as you can. Your vaults will soon be bursting at the seams. A second base for storage is good too.
- I have a thread on early guns, may help. Early on, if you wanna hurt people, melee is where it, is except if you're fighting Ratmen and Sky Ninjas (they seem to have some innate melee dodge because I have problems hitting them up close), I'm a big enthusiast of the Billhook.
- Cannon seems to be a over-powered weapon early on. Unless you're shambler-hunting or knocking over guild shipping, its not worth bringing to shitfights with bandits, cultists, etc.
-
Afaik, any mission that has some village or gardens map nets some apples.
-
To ratmen and sky ninjas my early answer is hammers and chainsaws. Also really helps getting around in village maps to just go through walls rather then wandering around looking for the right door. Hammers help alot in other early missions too cause lets face it front door is not always viable.
-
Ok so after 4 months the game is much better than the initial one.
The things discovered so far:
- Brainers are a must, otherwise you lack the tech to do anything. Five as soon as possible and 10 as the "sustainable" value (with 50 runts).
- Main base follows the one extractor expansion, some prisoner cells and a second hangar:
*One additional extractor enables to use the drill inmediately, which helps quite a lot and also opens the research of the next ship.
*The numbers of X-grog goes down the drain, the main advantage is the increment of Chateau de la morte production, which leaps 800k each 20 runts per month. Mass production gives you income early to spend, if you have the apples, which encourages the rat rodeo & lock'narr help.
*The prision cells is a fast buffer for live captures, specially for the hunting.
*If you run out of hellerium, you'll need the manpower to extract the hellerium to feed the Pachyderm with the flamethrower.
- Secondary bases with radar coverage. One of the most isolated receives also an outpost and an aircar. The investment is recovered after 4-5 civilian ships.
- Selective research is a must, the previous one i was researching too many weapons which didn't gives any progress to the tech.
- Pachyderm is vastly superior to the Airturtle, the techs can be reached almost simultaneously. Also is space approved :P.
- The early oscillator gun from sea missions is perfect for the aircar.
- Several zombie encounters. One was a smuggler ship with combat shotguns. They are perfect for zombie and creature hunting.
- There is a "exploit" of the surrender system, which is throwing a Molotov to the last guy standing. If it goes well is instant capture.
My main armor is warrior armor, before was barbarian as the most cheap-available. Warrior works well to manage most of the initial missions without any deads and many prisoners.
On the weaponry department I suck and quite a lot. Munnitions are scarce so I rely on sustainable sources such as "cannon/ballista", flintlock rifles and pistols. Close combat is fine (specially with an anomalous lady with 128 melee combat). Now I have upgraded to assault rifles, assault machineguns and combat shotguns as long as the munition can last (I hope I can reach manufacturing by then). I bring the cannon and the blackpowder bombs just I case I find something armored.
BTW, domestic shotgun with rubber slugs is quite crappy. You need to shot at least 2-3 times to a guy to take him down. The TUs and the distance required invites you throw the gun, take the club and go personal.
-
Brainers is the biggest bottleneck, because they are soft capped at 15 until endgame, so you should aspire to get all 15 them asap.
-
I don't see the appeal of rubber slug shotguns either, unless you're artistically grinding shooting and reactions against civilians.
Armor values of early game "armor" like Barbarian, Warrior and Scale is low enough that it hardly makes a difference over skin while hurting mobility very badly. With the low stats of early-game girls I'd rather give them stat bonuses. Warrior still gets used for shooter girls, but that's because of the shooting bonus. Its been a couple versions since I played early game, but my most deadly gals were swimsuit chainsaws, archers and javelineers with their choice of rogue/durathread/gym suit, and shotgunners.
Then once you get camo and nighvision the dynamic changes.
The problem with the assault cannon is you need a gal both accurate and strong to use it, and thats a combo you may not have enough of. Even then it is an unreliable weapon.
-
Isnt Camo Paint better than Warrior Armor? Not in terms of protection but overall usefullness.
-
I've played around 50+ hours now and thought I would chime in here.
X-Grog is a good early game money-maker but my primary income lately is piracy/kidnapping. The charger laser on a Jetbike and a Seagull on a Speeder can take down most easy pickings combined. Add to that some cattle prod gals and it's easy pickings. Shooting down even V Small civvie usually nets around 100K+from ransom and another 150K+ from the loot. As the prey gets tougher I'll start to focus more on taking only the valuable ones.
Research-wise I'm taking a different approach actually. Stealing tech from prisoners might be more random but a hell of a lot quicker. Reserve a few brainers for a few specific paths and the rest going on data discs/almanacs/prisoners/etc. 2 per project and I'm getting a breakthru every day or so. Also, my understanding is that the Mutant Alliance is a must to research quick. Not responding gives you -1500 but just showing up and dusting off if it's a lost cause gives the +1000 - the dead civvie penalty. Anyone confirm?
Does is matter where you build your initial base? My central Africa base is netting a ton more Reticulan traffic than my previous Siberian base which had more cult traffic.
-
Camo Paint, Amazon and some looted Tac Vests is how I gear early game.
What traffic you get is highly random game to game. For base placement, most important is how far you can reach with tour Airbus. I have found that Europe is ideal - you can reach everything except south part of South America and Australia, but I think I have never a mission spawning in Australia. Taiwan starting base has way worse reach. I once had 5 missions spawning nearly at the same time at Central America area - all unreachable by bus.
-
BTW, domestic shotgun with rubber slugs is quite crappy. You need to shot at least 2-3 times to a guy to take him down. The TUs and the distance required invites you throw the gun, take the club and go personal.
Domestic shotgun serves quite unique role of being a sustainable ranged stun-gun - so you can go for captures while raising ACC in the process. Yes, it's crappy, and yes, melee stunners & the whip are vastly superior, yet they won't allow you to train firing accuracy.
-
Domestic shotgun serves quite unique role of being a sustainable ranged stun-gun - so you can go for captures while raising ACC in the process. Yes, it's crappy, and yes, melee stunners & the whip are vastly superior, yet they won't allow you to train firing accuracy.
This is exactly why I use the rubber slugs on my interceptor (Jetbike) for training firing accuracy. I've harvested Military Transports enough that I have a spare Defender armor to make my solo gals pretty much immune to fire from the Civilian Shipping I shoot down. Nice little training missions.
-
Armor values of early game "armor" like Barbarian, Warrior and Scale is low enough that it hardly makes a difference over skin while hurting mobility very badly. With the low stats of early-game girls I'd rather give them stat bonuses. Warrior still gets used for shooter girls, but that's because of the shooting bonus. Its been a couple versions since I played early game, but my most deadly gals were swimsuit chainsaws, archers and javelineers with their choice of rogue/durathread/gym suit, and shotgunners.
I didn't see the appeal of Barbarian, but Warrior is quite decent imho. The gals have mostly decent armor values early on, but Warrior armor enables surviving stuff that could be even one-hit kills early. The most important fact is that Warrior armor makes Gals almost shotgun-proof.
I am currently using:
Pirate: The average armor once I get enough money to buy uber clothing.
Rogue: Reserved for archers and javeliners.
Warrior: Shooters and good melee warriors who are fast, strong and enduring enough to walk, run and carry useful things with Warrior armor.
-
I'm going to take the opportunity to ask about the organ traffickers and the raid into mansion.
For the first one I was quite unprepared for the acid rain, So I basically grab the two ghouls I shooted down and their equipment before bailing out. I assume you need some advanced armor (or at least night-ops ) to have a small chance of surviving the encounter (it's amazing how with chem ammunitions the domestic shotgun becomes a nightmare).
For the second one I have three ladies and a pachyderm (the rest of the 20+ are on the infirmary playing cards, sickbay is on the way). I want to do also a grab & go but I've seen also that is a night mission. Any advice?
-
The mansion sticks around for some time, you can wait until it's day and maybe until another gal comes out of sickbay.
-
Organ grinder is doable with experienced gals in basic gear, you only need to be fast and effective.
-
For the organ grinder a full clear is not the real goal. The best "prizes" are captured ghouls and ghoul scientists. You need very few of them but they are critical to progress. Don't over extend trying to kill everything.
Mansion grab and goes are certainly reasonable for the first pass. Even the items on the ground on the way to the roof exit can be worth the trip. Old earth books primarily.
-
Organ grinder is either "grab stuff fast and get out" mission, or - just get Smoke Ops armor, it is quite sufficient to carry you through the mission with minimal problems (oh, and better do it during the day). Any chem-resistant armor above Smoke Ops is obviously great as well. Some hover armor works great for early reconnaissance and hounds-removal before the entire map gets filled with smoke.
Ghouls have pretty bad reactions and their weapons are mostly short-range, so rushing them or shooting them from far away usually works great and isn't overly risky.
-
For the organ grinder a full clear is not the real goal. The best "prizes" are captured ghouls and ghoul scientists. You need very few of them but they are critical to progress. Don't over extend trying to kill everything.
In the early game, I'd agree with that - but if you are strong enough to clear the mission, then you should; because you can also get emeralds and shipwrecked gals. :)
-
Yes but for the necessary effort for an organ grinder i feel the rewards are slim once you have the research done. Nearly every gal that goes on an organ grinder runs is making a trip to sickbay for a few days in exchange for a handful of emeralds and 1-2 new gals. Maybe its worth it if you need the gems later on but early you just want the research and mid game gals are more easily had by other means in larger batches.
Also at least for me organ grinder runs are visually taxing to play due the sheer amount of "noise" on screen.
-
Research is also economy. For example if you research the small ship engine, you can then have your runts take it apart (requires workshop). The whole thing sells for 100k, but the parts sell for 135k, so that's a nice increase in profit from civilian shippings.
-
Are you accounting for the workshop time and runt hours with the disassembly?
-
To steer this discussion to different direction, I found airgame to be mostly pointless in midgame. Fortuna armed with anything better than 25mm cannon and spike rockets is good enough for shooting down gold transporting freighters and terror ships and when it comes to other stuff, it's generally better to wait for it to land as that ensures the valuable bits don't blow up and it does not generate crackdowns.
-
Crackdowns are about the only guaranteed showing of the top end vips. Reticulans in particular its much easier to get the elder from crackdowns rather then the outpost mission. The outpost is a right ball buster after the vision changes.