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Modding => Released Mods => XPiratez => Topic started by: KiriKaneko on August 01, 2017, 12:41:23 pm

Title: Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. Game complete!
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 01, 2017, 12:41:23 pm
So I've started a new game in the newest version and playing on top difficulty ironman. Got trashed like 5 times within the first few months so far XD

Play 1) Went quite well initially, I got a lasgun first month for advanced weapon rumours, and I decided to do a ratman village in March for some shooting and reflex training, and give some of my scrubs a chance to level their bravery. Lost 1 person to dogs, like 4 of them came and I killed them. 2 other people were wounded so I moved them into the ship to pass out, I had my low bravery person in there as well. Anyway another dog comes running around a corner, one of my soldiers was waiting with a shotgun but it mustve started its turn from right around the corner as it didn't get reaction fired and killed her. It then ran into the ship and killed one of the wounded. The other wounded then passed out and the low bravery girl panicked and got mangled, then it ran out of the ship and killed my last remaining soldier who I had been pulling back to the ship.

Lesson: Don't do ratman villages til I have enough firepower to remove a large portion of the map without creating smoke so I can shoot dogs at a distance, and enough armor to stand in the open and tank the fire from the ratmen. My strategy of camping corners with shotguns is no good when dogs are in play unless we have enough reactions to always get them

2) Forgot how to handle cold weather, month 1 fail

3) Forgot how to handle hot weather, month 1 fail XD

4) A rather disastrous temple raid in month 1, we won but I lost so many of my initial units I decided to restart. Curiously one of my KO units died for no apparent reason

5) Month 3 fail. I was ship camping in a academy lab raid. Seems the only reliable strategy when I have 6 units against 3 times as many units, I need captives for money and I can't be throwing units away since I have to sack anyone with <30 bravery and bring the 40 bravery ones on at least 1 mission to make them functional. They're just nowhere near as expendable as XCOM and TFTD soldiers who I just threw at the enemy like they are zergs or something. Anyway one of my peeps was wounded so I decided to let them KO rather than waste my refresments keeping her awake. Anyway about 30 turns after she passes out she suddenly dies. No wounds or anything. Searched the forum and found out about the feature where unconscious people die eventually unless periodically woken up :/

So I got mad since I'd just had a few bad runs and this campaign hadn't been going that well (month 3 with only 1 temple raid, lots of deaths, a few from being KOd for too long, no lasgun this time, hardly any research since I kept getting ratmen missions and I'm not touching that lol). I decided to just rush out and get the last 2 guys but they gunned us down with precision headshots in no time

So I rage quit and I've slept since then and now I'm thinking of starting another run but I need to plan this out, the way I see it I have a few options

1) I lower the difficulty. I don't really want to though, but I can't win without cheesing on this difficulty if I fight straight up, and camping inside my ship for 100 turns feels like cheesing and can be pretty boring

2) I just soldier on til I can get armor. I think I need advanced weapon rumours for this though. On my first run I got a lasgun in month 1 but it was from a distress beacon for an academy ship and I have no idea how rare these are. I probably need a lot of interrogation research as well but from what I remember the tac vests are good enough to handle most ballistic tier weapons head on, which I will need since I'm usually outnumbered 3 to 1 on each mission and the maze like levels allow enemies to easily rush up and fire point blank at me.

Main problem here is A), getting the lasgun, B) I'm gonna need to camp my landing craft for months until I get armor, and C) the enemies dying after being KOd will result in severe loss of revenue until then. I think I can probably mitigate this somewhat though with 2 methods. 1) I stop using handles and start using stun rods, this way I cause no HP damage to my victims although it will be harder to KO them, and they won't suffer as much continuous stun damage, or 2) I wake up my victims after I KO them and let them walk away, which would be weird and distracting, and I could easily get shot or melee'd by an enemy I mistook for a previously stunned and disarmed enemy, and why wouldn't they realistically just pick up a weapon and keep fighting? It's weird. I'd probably go with the stun rod method, get them in the ship then wake them up every so often before stunning them again

3) I employ more lethal methods. If I camp the landing craft for a while and keep shooting, then when most enemies are down I get people out and into good cover position kneeling behind rocks I can probably just gun everyone down. Muskets seem to be a rather long range gun compared to what most of the enemies have, and shotguns are lethal in urban environments. Downside here s that like 90% of my income was coming from captures, but if I can just do this til I get armor, or if I can find out how to get shark jetbikes (I forgot) then I can make my money selling civilian ship engines.

I think before I decide what to do, what I need to know most is how much time I have. From what I remember of my previous incomplete run (I was at the point where I was trying to make the spaceship) the low level quests like trader warehouse and church raids disappear eventually, and for me they are the most lucrative of all. I also want to stock up on gun almanachs so I don't want to miss out on the early save a sister and crackhouse raids either. But most of all, I know eventually ships were appearing full of laser and gauss wielding enemies, and the AI were sending out retaliation ships regularly even without provocation.

If time really is a serious factor then I have to either lower the difficulty or cheese it from my ship. If time isn't a problem then I can shoot as many people as I want, focus on capturing only melee enemies, patch up the odd enemy who is bleeding out and just gradually crawl along at a steady pace. This will also lead my soldiers to get good aim so that shooting becomes a more reliable way of dispatching enemies even on reaction fire

So is time an important factor and I have to KO nearly everyone? Or are the things like easy missions disappearing, crackdown ships and gauss enemies unlocked through research progression rather than time? Do you have any advice for me to play without ship camping and have a good chance of progressing on the hardest difficulty with only early game tech available?

I want the game to be difficult, but I also don't wanna lose my campaign because I get bored and stop ship camping, or suddenly the gauss soldiers appear and I'm still running around with muskets because I've been shooting everyone XD

P.s is ship camping frowned upon?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Yataka Shimaoka on August 01, 2017, 12:55:40 pm
Lol! Looks like someone had a bad playthrough  of piratez. But even though the playthroug is rough in higher difficulties, I would like to suggest that you must mostly (and only in early game) rely on using melee. Melee is far more lethal than ballistics and lasers, well based on my experience. I only use lasguns when robotic type enemies are around, and shotguns? Don't use them for reaction shots, they are only useful for taking down armored human targets! For reaction fire, I strongly suggest to use automatically rifles or small pistols, and don't camp too much, be aggressive in a tactical way.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 01, 2017, 01:13:14 pm
Aggression tends to get me wiped pretty fast. Even 2 remaining enemies can potentially kill all 6 of my people as my last mission demonstrated!

I primarily use melee as it gets me the most money in captives but it seems to be far riskier than shooting or throwing Molotov cocktails. Rushing them in melee is suicidal, but camping doorways is the way to get captives it seems, very boring though. The most reliable way I have found to win a mission is to use muskets at long range (field missions) or shotguns in short range urban environments but then I don't get my captives, don't make any money and will presumeably lose the game when I fail to advance quickly enough :(
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: JustTheDude/CABSHEP on August 01, 2017, 02:08:37 pm
Bows are good early in game. Gals with bows could easily hit targets over the walls, so six soldiers in airbus with two scouts and four archers are good in ratman and Lok'Nar villages. Ratman are sold for 1k each, so there is no point in capturing them. I get captives primarily from academy (tower, scientific experiments) and church/temple mission. In other missions I rely on opportunity created by the game to capture some prisoners (everyone have handle or stun rod in quickdraw slot) or if there is new kind of opponent to interrogate. Rush for money is not worth death of any gal especially in the beginning where is hard to replace them. You could buy inteceptor and shoot down civilian ships, but sometimes it's not worth it, if you don't have weapon that don't use ammo. Rockets are very expensive.

Rotogun is easy to obtain early and gal with natural maximum accuracy(125), crouching and in range have more than 30% chance to hit. 15 bullets burst mean usually 5 hits that can kill armored targets.

Harpoon gun with stun bolts are frequent loot from academy missions so stunning unarmored targets from a distance is safer and easier.

I think good tactic will be like aggressive-defence. Taking good position with good gals, scout, bite and lure enemies with weaker.     
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Ethereal_Medic on August 01, 2017, 02:51:41 pm
Aggression tends to get me wiped pretty fast. Even 2 remaining enemies can potentially kill all 6 of my people as my last mission demonstrated!

I primarily use melee as it gets me the most money in captives but it seems to be far riskier than shooting or throwing Molotov cocktails. Rushing them in melee is suicidal, but camping doorways is the way to get captives it seems, very boring though. The most reliable way I have found to win a mission is to use muskets at long range (field missions) or shotguns in short range urban environments but then I don't get my captives, don't make any money and will presumeably lose the game when I fail to advance quickly enough :(

That's a bit drastic to say. Yes you'll advance less quickly but you're not risking it to be crackdowned by one of the major factions (unless you foil thier shipping plans).
The early game is quite long and you've plenty of time to prepare a longterm plan. Also the "8 have to withdraw to lose the game" rule still applies but it's very very unlikely that factions stop paying the protection money. Just don't bother with the government troopers too much^^
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Yataka Shimaoka on August 01, 2017, 03:00:48 pm
Aggression tends to get me wiped pretty fast. Even 2 remaining enemies can potentially kill all 6 of my people as my last mission demonstrated!

I primarily use melee as it gets me the most money in captives but it seems to be far riskier than shooting or throwing Molotov cocktails. Rushing them in melee is suicidal, but camping doorways is the way to get captives it seems, very boring though. The most reliable way I have found to win a mission is to use muskets at long range (field missions) or shotguns in short range urban environments but then I don't get my captives, don't make any money and will presumeably lose the game when I fail to advance quickly enough :(
But in a tactical way 8)
Also consider moving your melee gals to cover rather than the open. Then leave your long range gals in partial cover, it has some advantage, believe me.
Next is, I am not advancing fast enough, but enemies tend to succumb from my MELEE attacks because melee has a chance to pierce through armor( yes, believe me, I am also playing the 5th difficulty) than using explosives and long range guns. I also give specific roles for my gals, one is a sniper, one is for demolition, one as a medic, and finally a suicidal melee one, which is always wearing the TOUGHEST suit i have since melee guys are the frontliners while the others wear armors that grants higher tus and stamina
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KateMicucci on August 01, 2017, 05:11:29 pm
The damage curve is so wild on 0-200% that the marginal increase in armor from 20 to 30 with scale or warrior doesn't seem worth it for a melee gal compared to the many benefita of the unarmored suits. I like to give melee gals something that increases their TUs and energy so that they can either clear a room or get into cover, instead of trying to tank shots. Gun gals can have TU reducing armor without much drawback because guns use a TU% instead of a flat value.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: sinisteragent on August 01, 2017, 05:27:42 pm
I always play on the second highest difficulty setting, personally. The main effect of the highest one is to make the game more tedious after a while, as every ship is packed to the gills with enemies to root out. The regular fights become a laborious chore very quickly.

That's not a criticism of the game either, it was true of the original, and I get the impression the top setting is intentionally over the top.

Also once you get past the rough early game underdog status, having so many enemies arguably makes the game easier as you have far more guns, ammo, and captives to use.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Yataka Shimaoka on August 01, 2017, 05:29:49 pm
The damage curve is so wild on 0-200% that the marginal increase in armor from 20 to 30 with scale or warrior doesn't seem worth it for a melee gal compared to the many benefita of the unarmored suits. I like to give melee gals something that increases their TUs and energy so that they can either clear a room or get into cover, instead of trying to tank shots. Gun gals can have TU reducing armor without much drawback because guns use a TU% instead of a flat value.
That's ninja style! But I never lost a melee gal anyways in such tactic, I don't go ninja either, the point of giving the melee gals high grade armors so that they can survive reaction shots from their victim. I am playing in the highest difficulty and it is also set on ironman, and I only lost 2 gals in the early waves, not because they are melee.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: greattuna on August 01, 2017, 08:03:33 pm
Even a marginal increase like 20->30 gives very good protection against shotguns, which are both common and dangerous in early game.

At the start of the game you won't have good long-range options. Muskets have terribad accuracy, and bows require gals with good throwing, which are not common, hence why in my playthrough I went full CQC, and yes, I didn't use bows at all.

Melee starts out great and gets even better as you progress, whether you're using daggers, handles or axes. I recommend axes, though, in trained hands this simple tool can decimate a lot of things. Use cover, sprint around, and strike from behind, but don't get too aggressive, or you'll overextend and lose your hands on enemy turn.

Most of guns aren't that hot in the early game, thankfully, you aren't facing good armor for a couple of months, and even if you do, you have axes. What I'd recommend is shotguns: they have good accuracy to compensate for poor firing skills, they have lotsa pellets (some of them will hit that poor sod), and they come really cheap. My personal favorites are heavy shotgun and military shotgun, former because it has 20 dmg per pellet and gunbutt, latter because of slugs (45 damage) and HEAT ammo (66 damage).

As of tactics, camping your landing craft is not exactly a good idea: you need to strike first and not be afraid of getting hit a few times. Gals are tough! unlike these damned slaves who fold like paper. Once again, you don't have to overextend, and you shouldn't take more risk than you can afford: if that priest is staring for you, shotgun at ready, just shoot him. Gals > money. You don't have to kill everyone though, just enough that trying to capturing the rest won't be lethal for you. Use ranged options too: domestic shotgun has rubber shells, harpoon gun - stun darts, and eventually you'll obtain access to tazogun (do not recommend, kills people way too often), electric lasso (would recommend, it works now!) and tranquilizer darts, which are even better than regular stun darts.

Also have your brainers research something at all times. Research = score = more money at the end of month. Expand your research base too, and don't forget to interrogate people.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: khade on August 01, 2017, 09:05:50 pm
It's been stated before, and will be again, as this mod is still being worked on, it can be unstable, therefore IRONMAN IS NOT RECOMMENDED.

Something else you can try for is getting enemies to surrender, killing people lowers the morale of those they work with, most humanoid enemies will surrender if they have all panicked.  Stunning doesn't lower morale.  Sometimes it's just a better idea to kill a few enemies as examples.  Also fire works wonders on medium armored enemies.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: legionof1 on August 01, 2017, 10:13:01 pm
If you are playing on maximum difficulty dont worry to much about getting captures. The sheer volume of foes means you'll have lots of opportunities. Defiantly thin the herd with lethal means.   
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Martin on August 02, 2017, 12:10:52 am
You can try your luck with bunch of airspeeders against a fighter UFOs if you want advanced weapons early.

They can take it down with a bit of luck.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 02, 2017, 12:49:41 am
Well it's not really ironman but I'm pretending it is XD

Why go for lethal melee weapons over nonlethal? It's not like nonlethal melee weapons are hard to acquire. Are axes better than fuso sword?

So far I've been camping my landing craft and gradually switching towards stun rods. It seems stun rods don't do any health damage, and this means enemies stunned with a stun rod will eventually wake up. If I drag them inside the rape airbus I can just kept smacking them with our rods whenever they wake up and they never die, plus our melee is improving fast while we camp XD

I've had my entire squad decimated by just 2 enemies even while they're in cover, so I think there's no such thing as thinning them enough that they can't beat us, but baiting them into range of my landing craft seems to work well since they usually waste a lot of TU getting there and then we can all mob them together. We do suffer damage after an enemy opens the doors since any other ones in range will start shooting but so far it hasn't been too bad. It's boring but I just have to be very patient, I'll transition into a more aggressive playstyle when I either get better armor or a landing craft that lets me bring at least twice as many people so that when things start to go FUBAR I can definetly bail

I so want to play more aggressive but either my luck with RNG is atrocious or I'm completely playing the game wrong, even 1 dog can decimate my entire squad in a single turn, and 2 enemies can kill like 4 people and leave the survivors a gibbering wreck. We can try to get into hard cover that blocks line of sight but there's so many doorways and trees and stuff, and so many night missions full of NV enemies that we could basically be shot at from any direction at any time it seems like. I played UFO and TFTD with zerg tactics and smoke spam but with 6 soldiers vs 14 and ineffective smoke I can only depend on armor and that's a ways off yet.

I watched this guy doing a playthrough on youtube. I didn't watch the entire thing but he got utterly wrecked in one turn on a smuggler ship right at the start of his run. That's what happens to me when I leave the landing craft. Every time XD. And I play patiently and camp the craft, but as soon as I run out of patience and step outside to deal with the last few enemies I basically get wiped within a few turns by revolver and niner crits XD

I think I'll stick like this for a while, keep taking prisoners and buying more brainers til I get armor. How many brainers is a good amount to have right now? I have 5 so far and I was thinking of saving for shark jetbikes. I don't know if they changed it so that they can only use rockets now but last version I made a killing shooting down civvie crafts with gatling guns, and even tho it said on the screen I was getting negative score I was actually getting like double the usual score from doing that (I'm guessing the infamy score was like 3x the negative score or something)
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 02, 2017, 12:50:12 am
BTW thankyou for all the replies so far, it's good info. Sorry for being such a scrub XD
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: greattuna on August 02, 2017, 01:24:07 am
Lethal weapons are much more reliable than non-lethal options, which either are unreliable (cattle prod w\ highly random damage), are actually lethal (ball bat) or require a lot of overhead to be really effective (handle and it's scaling from bravery of all things). And at the start of the game you can't really afford to capture everyone.

Axes are different from fuso swords, but I prefer them for a few reasons:
1. Ax is one-handed;
2. Ax has decent accuracy;
3. Ax has high base damage, scales strongly with strength, and doesn't have +xx% armor;
4. Ax is available from start, I think you get one right at the beginning.

I didn't like cattle prods the few times I used them. There have been times when my gal ran towards the guy, spent remaining TUs swinging her prod... but he just stood unfazed. If not for contingency plans, I'd lose many gals to bad rolls.

As it stands, I gravitate towards handles, they are small, easy to acquire and really, really effective at right hands. They're standard equipment for me, placed in quick draw slot, so everyone can go capturing when opportunity arises.

I don't know how you manage to lose entire squad to two guys, but maybe inability to capture them would be nice cue for you to kill them instead. Killing is safer, too: lots of options to fire over the cover, or just blow up the cover instead.

Well I don't know how to help you with aggressiveness. The only advice I can give you is to be as much careful as you are aggressive. Scout ahead. Take vantage points. Use cover, stand two tiles away from corner, leave your gals enough TUs for one snap shot so they could react. Stay away from sources of light. Go in groups of 2\3\4, so your gals can cover\heal each other. Have various equipment and be ready to face e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.

Also, ratmen missions are generally not worth it. Too much risk for a bunch of low-tech equipment and a money purse.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: sinisteragent on August 02, 2017, 01:57:19 am
Lethal melee weapons can cut down enemies like you wouldn't believe, and if you kill enough of the right ones in a short enough period, the rest will surrender. Decapitation strategies are particularly effective if you can locate the leaders early on.

If you're "camping your landing craft", you're basically doing it wrong. This should almost never be necessary as it's plain bad strategy and runs directly counter to how combat works. Morale drops rapidly over time, environmental effects are basically a timer, and striking enemies hard and fast is the best way to cause surrenders (which you'll almost always get even if you go all out to kill everything that moves. If you aim for it, you can get the majority of enemies to surrender by mixing kills in with your stun raids).

Honestly, at least while you're struggling with the early stage, I highly recommend dropping the difficulty a notch. You can always start again, or just edit the save file to raise the difficulty again later (it's very easy, just changing one number).

As for brainers, have as many as you can afford. People with encyclopedic knowledge of the game will probably say you can max them out in a month or something absurd, but 5 is fine early on, you can start bumping them up one or two at a time once your cashflow is reliably 100-200k over what you need to survive for the month.

I think aiming exclusively for captures is probably the biggest thing you're doing wrong, really. Especially on top difficulty, you're basically going up against forces 5 times as numerous as you and trying to punch them all out - of course you're losing. Get some killing in and things should start moving more smoothly.

Also: make sure you have lots of healing items. Even if you go entirely lethal, you'll get enemies who pass out from a combination of pain/smoke/stun, injury, and bleeding, and it's often profitable to patch them up. Musket balls actually have a secondary stunning effect, which makes them more useful than you might think even with the unimpressive accuracy.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 02, 2017, 02:41:54 am
Yeah you're right. I'll unleash my inner homicidal maniac and start killing everything that doesn't surrender, thanks lol XD

p.s 50 bravery is enough to never panic unless something bad happens. I put - signs on the end of a character's name if it has sub 50 bravery and take it off when it gets 50 bravery. Just bringing them on the mission and trapping them in the landing craft while they panic is enough to level their bravery.

Camping does seem highly effective. Aside from one scare where at ana cademy outpost someone kamikaze me with a stun bomb launcher and KO 3 of my 6 people I haven't had any trouble at all. I have discovered that KO with stun rod doesn't necessarily equal survival for my captives and in that academy outpost 10 of the 17 enemies died even though I stunned them, tho 2 were discs. I don't use the cattle prod because it's too big for the quickdraw slot and have been using stun rods, tho it has bad scaling

Usually 2 people cant wipe my whole squad, that was just some bad luck. They got crit insta kills and hit every shot and then the survivors panicked.

I don't think melee weapons would be effective on the open field landed craft missions since I would have to rush out in the open, but bows and molotovs should be effective, and shotguns have a surprising range. Even a glancing blow will cause a bleedout eventually but I probably want to keep the pressure with fast kills to cause a rapid surrender and get some captives

When do you decide to use the handle over the axe? Are there specific times to go for a capture? Has everyone here really had bad experiences with the shotgun or something? It seems to totally wreck face when I use it, I can snipe people at 20 tiles with ol'shotgun and kill 50% of the time with pretty mediocre aim it seems like, and muskets are disc killing machines!
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 02, 2017, 02:57:06 am
Hmm, seems this small launcher wont count for advanced weapons rumours, I cant even research it yet :(

I didn't get it this early last time so no idea when I can or if it ever counts for AWR, guess I'll keep waiting and hope that the mission from before pops up again. Just got a save a sister mission and I've bought a bunch of bows and axes so gonna give it a try and see how this works. A bit worried tho since I remember a lot of handguns and shotguns on this mission, and lots of building with twisty corridors where its easy to get ambushed. Perhaps I should attempt this one at night, surely thugs don't get NV
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: sinisteragent on August 02, 2017, 05:05:47 am
Generally, handle if you can get 3-5 hits off (they'll often go down with less, but it's best to be sure, and have the option to pull back if it goes badly). Axe if they have decent armour and/or you want them out of the fight asap.

You might be surprised how far a gal can run and still whallop an enemy, especially if they go full berserker (ie: nude). But yeah, if you're out in the open you're probably better off peppering them with arrows. I used to hit everything I saw with molotovs because the panic + light + damage was a great combo.

The best thing though is to keep experimenting and doing what you enjoy, don't pay too much attention to our preferences. Some people only do what is most mathematically efficient, others swear by a weapon that only works well for them because it syncs with something else they do, and others still just plain like a particular weapon for no good reason (I really like a pair of flintlock pistols even though they're among the worst weapons in the game). If you like shotguns and they're working for you, go for it.

I'm no expert with the research tree, but I'm pretty sure you'll be holding onto that small launcher for a very, very long time before you can research it.

Usually 2 people cant wipe my whole squad, that was just some bad luck. They got crit insta kills and hit every shot and then the survivors panicked.

Yeah see, this is why hovering at 50 moral is bad. It puts you one lucky shot away from unravelling your whole team.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: khade on August 02, 2017, 05:56:13 am
70 bravery is what you probably want, which you ought to be able to get fairly easily even with 10 bravery gals.

I know we eventually get a bug hunt mode that allows us to see where the last few enemies are, but I'm pretty sure that enemies instinctively know where our gals are long before that starts, if you're camping and get bored, then have people die, I suspect it's because they already know exactly where your gals are by that point.

Shotguns are incredible, early on and against unarmored enemies. Against anything with armor, the early shotguns are likely to be completely worthless, though there are a few really good ones available later.

As I understand it, the stun rod is basically vendor trash, or materials for more useful stuff, its damage is way too low to be useful.  Though it might work against machinery.

Uh, just a note, I play on the third difficulty, but this stuff should still be useful
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 02, 2017, 10:56:56 am
The stun rod has a special feature, it doesn't cause any health damage. Good for camping strategy because death while KO occurs at 300% stun when they suffer gradual health damage, and stun rises faster when health is lowered. If an enemy KOs and their stun damage isn't that high and their HP is full they sometimes wake up by themselves. Not always though, I've discovered it's safer to KO them then wake them back up again with refreshments if I want to be sure they survive, although this means there are lots of unarmed people running around and it s very distracting.

On my most recent mission I had a temple one. I decided I could end the mission more quickly if I take the church building. Church mission targets are often poorly equipped with the exception of a Molotov thrower and 2-3 shotgunners so I decided it was risky but not too terribly risky. I made a rush for the church while carrying refreshments and KOd a few enemies at the front door. I then left someone behind to drag them inside and had everyone else run into the church and clear it. We did take a couple of small injuries but we got control of the whole building. I then had 3 people camp the doors, my panic girl go into the confession booth, and the other 2 revived all the unconscious enemies. They then went to stand beside the doors as backup looking away from all the captives.

It seems the enemies become very aggressive with attacking the church, I think because all the unarmed captives could see us, and we kept KOing them and dragging them inside. When we had about 6-7 captives we KOd the captives again (they were crowding the doors) and dragged them into the main room to revive them all again. The second time we did this the bug hunt mode started so we moved quickly to bring down the final target. Overall it only took 30 turns to get 17 captives this way. I think in future I will try to take the main building on these missions if they are close to my landing craft or if there are enough buildings leading towards it, since we can usually advanced slowly between doorways and reaction shot enemies when they open doors (they always do this weird thing where they turn sideways and fire in the wrong direction when they see us after opening a door, then we KO them. This way I can keep all of the captured enemies conscious inside the building and they won't distract us and will probably lure the rest of the enemies

Alternatively I can grab one enemy, bring him into the landing craft and wake him up, and he will presumeably lure lots more enemies and save me time. I won't do this long term but for now there aren't many AoE enemies and it is working very well for getting a lot of money and research. I think I'll switch to a more homicidal method when I'm dealing with low value targets that have no further research value XD

I think in that mission my people definetly panicked because they only had 50 bravery and were on the brink. However, it doesn't take very long for them to drop that far. Killing raises morale but we would need to kill very rapidly to beat the rate of degradation I think, although that's certainly a big power of the homicide route. I really need a source of molotovs, I'm running out since those Molotov guys on church missions scare me and I torch them, and I've been doing those beetle missions to train bravery on my panic girls and use molotovs to get the beetles
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Martin on August 02, 2017, 12:16:46 pm
How many brainers is a good amount to have right now?

As much as you can afford. 

Don’t think of brainers as something to support your pirating eneterprise. Consider your pirating enterprise as somehting to support your brainers.

R&D department is the difference between you and all the other guys, from lowly ninja gals to mighty star gods.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Ethereal_Medic on August 02, 2017, 12:43:23 pm
Axes are different from fuso swords, but I prefer them for a few reasons:
1. Ax is one-handed;
2. Ax has decent accuracy;
3. Ax has high base damage, scales strongly with strength, and doesn't have +xx% armor;
4. Ax is available from start, I think you get one right at the beginning.

Also, ratmen missions are generally not worth it. Too much risk for a bunch of low-tech equipment and a money purse.

I see quite some love for the Ax and your points are true. Also about all melee weapons use 50-150% damage roulette, thus leading to a very 'reliable' damage output especially against poorly armored foes. The Handle does awesome work too in combo with the Ax.

The ratmen rodeo's biggest advantage is a garanteed supply of apples. Those can be brewed to "Chateau de la Morte" and sold for a much bigger bonus than X-Grog.
I do understand the grudge with this mission. Alot of buildings, bad weaponry to take advantage of and also DOGS.
Having 6 hands with no/bad armor and bad guns makes these missions quite dangerous for the potencial loot of apples and a stray money purse.
Since they return every month just like lokk'nar village you can pick your time to strike. Sadly you've to deal with the score-penalty caused by ignoring the missions.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 02, 2017, 02:12:54 pm
I didn't know there was a penalty for ignoring the missions >.>

I have HE grenades now so I might nuke everything in the near vicinity of my ship and then pay very close attention til the smoke clears, but I think it's so easy for a dog to rush through the smoke to behind my ship, then rush in and kill everyone next turn, too risky, and if we leave the ship we have to level everything in sight to be sure the dogs cant reach us. Think I'll be leaving ratman til I have armor and heavy shotguns, then we can stand in the open around our ship and just blow away all of the obstacles around us

I did a bordello mission and decided to take the homicide route since their captives are cheap. I got into positions with shotguns since we were in a wide open trainyard and approaching the building to melee would be suicide, it was safer to take a camping position at hard cover and shoot down anyone in the open

So we got into positions and someone ran into the open, took a shot and then they took 2 reaction shots and killed someone. Fortunately the only casualty on my side since we wasted the rest no problem. Quite a few of the enemies surrendered but when they ran out into the open I shot them anyway to try and force the remaining enemies to surrender as well (logic). Well in the end 2 were left, I had to kill the boss guy and then the other surrendered, I got 3 captives (since I KOd in melee one enemy who rushed while we were reloading). Aside from the gun almanac it really wasn't worth it, they didn't surrender anywhere near fast enough. Might've been better with mortars so we could shell the building and keep the casualties racking up faster, maybe some longer range weapon so I could hit enemies visible in windows or on the roof, rather than having to wait for them to enter the open ground. Tried the bow but it's such an energy drain.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Ethereal_Medic on August 02, 2017, 04:20:06 pm
X-Piratez is like a lovely surgery. You do it with passion and precision or the results ain't that pretty :3
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: legionof1 on August 02, 2017, 04:30:10 pm
Snip
 (they always do this weird thing where they turn sideways and fire in the wrong direction)
Snip

This is the foes failing the close quarters combat check. Attempting to use a gun while adjacent to a foe triggers a (melee+reaction)x weapon melee accuracy vs evasion check. If you fail you are turned away and the shot fires from the new orientation.

Early foes stats are very poor compared to the average gal when it come to reactions and melee skill, so the cqc system is largely in the players favor.   
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 02, 2017, 04:39:50 pm
Ah so that`s what it was. I had thought it was some strange bug that affected the AI and saved me many times from shotguns lol

Do warehouse wars give guaranteed tac vests? I might research warehouse wars and then just go in with molotovs and shotguns, kill everyone the first few times and get myself some early tac vests
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Yataka Shimaoka on August 02, 2017, 04:49:56 pm
Hey its OK! Just always try to play tactically and assign appropriate roles for your gals and everything will be OK, and do not be very bothered when it comes to research, all enemies has a weak spot that you can exploit
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 02, 2017, 04:58:00 pm
tyvm

I`m wondering a lot about camo. Is there a way to tell whether enemies have NV or TV? I`d like to use camo but last campaign I went with camo and got murdered everytime I used it over armor since enemies could see right through it. I could be playing a lot more aggressively if I could get closer to the enemy without being seen, I could then shoot without retaliation fire, get an accurate Molotov, or rush up and axe or stun an enemy
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KateMicucci on August 02, 2017, 05:07:25 pm
Why go for lethal melee weapons over nonlethal? It's not like nonlethal melee weapons are hard to acquire. Are axes better than fuso sword?
Nonlethal can't reliably take out a mechtoid or an armored car and even against a normal human there's a decent chance of whiffing. It's easy enough to carry a nonlethal secondary anyway.

I ran the math about a year ago and found sabers and cutlasses turned out to be top damage per TU for most of my gals, even better than some more advanced weapons like techblades. But this was a year ago and I haven't checked for changes. Still, axes are my preferred anti-armor weapon as they are still 3x1 and 1-handed, and not so slow that they can't be used against a group of lighter enemies.

In my six-gal team I have specialized them into archetypes so that I don't forget something important when the roster changes. Sniper, heavy gunner, arc shooter, nurse, wall breacher, melee monster. While the others may carry cutlasses for melee work (recently my heavy gunner took out 4 osiron security in one turn with her cutlass) it is vital to have the melee monster carry an anti-armor weapon. There are a few early-game enemies that are nearly
 impervious to any other weapon besides maybe a crate of violence or barrel bomb. It's not cool when the last enemy is an armored car and you already used all your high explosive.

Camo works best at night. It's not great in daytime. Bootypedia entries will tell you who has nv/tv
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: JustTheDude/CABSHEP on August 02, 2017, 05:11:44 pm
No, tac-vest is not guaranteed. There can be spawned runt outfit also or even space suit. Parrots could resolve your problem with dogs, or if you don't want to lose slot (especially when using airbus) use grav harness. It's suit that grant gals ability to fly so no melee creature could do you any harm.
Archer gals should have bootle of moonshine in their eq for stamina problems. Hunting rifle is good long range weapon, but mid-armored can survive even two front shots. Researching hunting rifle also should grant ability to transform it into scoped rifle just like with rusty niner. 


Only researching corpses or live captives can give you information about NV and TV, but it's fairly logic. Beastman could sniff you, and they see better etc. I think early available camo paints work better for snipers than melee gals. It's better to lure enemies to melee gals, than trying to rush them. Also sneaking around buildings and attacking from behind is best camo availible. Just need to be carefull when enemies have "sense" like "fartbag".
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 02, 2017, 06:17:17 pm
Muahahha, I've developed a devilish early game tactic!

I've equipped my soldiers in warrior armor and on wide open missions I just make them stand in the open far from the enemy at the map border. The AI shoots from well out of effective range and misses most shots, the ones that hit are front shots that rarely do any damage, and it's mainly small arms fire that hits, the shotguns don't have a chance

Downside is they kill each other a lot while shooting at me but soon they run out of ammo and I can mop up with lots of lovely captures, if I missed anyone then the warrior armor seems to greatly improve our survivability since small arm fire is much less likely to do damage, and does only minor-moderate damage on a crit, and I just play it somewhat safe as I advance, making sure to stop outside doorways and in full cover. When 90% of the enemy are out of ammo I can easily handle the survivors with 6 soldiers, and if anyone with a big gun appears I just shoot them (I equip shotgun in main hand and stun rod in offhand, if I want to fire I just put the stun rod in quick slot, since shotgun is 2H there's no risk of reaction fire killing potential captives) :)
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 02, 2017, 06:33:38 pm
God I love warrior armor. It's not quite tac vest but it's pretty reliable survivability for this point in the game :D
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Yataka Shimaoka on August 02, 2017, 06:44:02 pm
In terms of tactic, warrior armor is far more powerful than the tac vest 8)
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: JustTheDude/CABSHEP on August 02, 2017, 06:55:50 pm
There is a button in HUD to drain all remaining action points. It is placed in left down corner and you need to right click on it.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 02, 2017, 07:37:56 pm
Yeh but its a pain when I'm skipping a lot of turns while waiting for enemies to get closer. Got heavy shotties now

I got one of those distress beacons but they didn't have any lasguns this time. It was some of those guildies in carapace but molotovs and black powder bombs made short work of them. Probably gonna have to attack a base when one appears and sacrifice some people to make off with a gauss gun or something XD
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: sinisteragent on August 02, 2017, 07:42:32 pm
Quick note also that it only takes one stubborn enemy (ie: usually high bravery, or robotic) to keep everyone from surrendering even if they all want to. Anyone who's panicked or been knocked out at least once will surrender, but only if everyone else left alive agrees. Leaders tend to have higher bravery (and when killed, cause higher morale loss), so you'll want to locate the leaders as soon as you can.

On one terror mission, for example, I went in merciessly lethal for several turns, carving down humanist mooks and a few mid-level guards, and one leader. It then only took one hand cracking the remaining leader over the head for everyone to surrender. I got 14 surrenders that way, plus several captures including the leader, more than half the total number. It's a great trade, as hitting them all over the head wou ld likely have cost me a few soldiers, or at least major injuries.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Solarius Scorch on August 02, 2017, 08:29:25 pm
Ah so that`s what it was. I had thought it was some strange bug that affected the AI and saved me many times from shotguns lol

There is even an explicit message displayed when it happens...

I'm off to cut my wrists or something. :P
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: greattuna on August 02, 2017, 08:51:51 pm
There is even an explicit message displayed when it happens...
Not when it's the enemy who whiffs it.

-----

Gee, this early-game tactic is something. You should probably think of something else by the time normal crafts, mutant pogroms and crackdowns roll out, because you won't be able to just tank their hits like that. Against plasma it's a straight-up suicide.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Solarius Scorch on August 02, 2017, 08:58:38 pm
Not when it's the enemy who whiffs it.

I thought it should be pretty obvious because the same happens to you... And there's a Ufopaedia article... But maybe it's not as obvious straight away.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 02, 2017, 10:18:00 pm
In my last game I used the zerg tactic for late game. Just went in there guns blazing, focused on capturing specific things and nuking the rest. If I was desperate for a capture I'd get it, drag it into my ship and abort. If I just wanted to get a whole bunch of stuff like a star god ship I would get in there with one of the really big ships and just kill everything with explosives and recoilless rifles and fuso swords. Problem is right now I cant do that since A) I don't have an industry and most of my income is from captives, B) my craft isn't so replaceable atm and C) I can only bring 6 people so if things go FUBAR it's entirely possible that I'll fail to make it to the ship and harder to leave people in the ship as a dedicated escape crew. The dynamic of the late game vs the early game is so different for me, with the easy missions and industry supporting the meat grinder of the harder missions for progression

I just had a WONDERFUL mission! A small ship landed and when I got there it was one of those + ships full of carapace armor osiron security. Those guys tank heavy shotgun shells like a champ, are hard as hell to stun and are dangerous to anything that isn't power armor. What's more they had laser guns, I decided to take the chance to get that laser for advanced weapons rumors and the next step towards delicious tac vests/armor!

Anyway I carpeted the place in black fire bombs and molotovs. Just kept stepping out of the ship to throw. I had a dedicated heavy shotgunner for the research personnel and a couple of people had axes. Our warrior armor surprisingly held up quite well against some retal fire, no one died. Those enemies were really persistent and wouldn't give up but when we got into bug hunt mode I got the last 2 with blind firing molotovs over the ships and they surrendered to me

So I got a whole bunch of las weapons and mid tier ballistics, plus a mind probe! I love molotovs and black powder bombs so much, I never used them much before since I went with captures in my last game prior to transitioning to mortar and grenade launcher use, but these really are excellent! Still haven't had a chance to try these axes but I really wanna give it a try, I'm gonna use sabers too and decide which I prefer. I think this game is relatively safe now since I've got quite a bit of cash saved up, I expect to be getting armor soon, warrior armor is surprisingly good and my troops are getting better. I can afford to take a much more proactive playstyle now and it's alleviating the boredom for me a lot. I'll keep using armor to rack up capture income on the easier missions and use my explosives/axes for tougher mission homicide sprees for the tech and high value captures, and see if I can unlock pachy soon (forgot how to get it but I love that ship)
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 03, 2017, 01:19:52 pm
Haha, got pwned by a chrysalid. Black powder bombs and molotovs don't work so well against those. I thought lining my people up might make it do the little dance thing but it just made it easier for it to murder 3 of my people

Finally got tac vests tho. I'd like tac armor to cover my sides but for now I can effectively tank bullets in the open and lock down doorways against gunfire if not melee attacks. Got myself an air car with 25mm cannon too so I think I'm past the early game difficulty hump. From now on I'll be getting my cash through captives in easy missions and I'll probably send expeditions to bases when they appear to gather some tech at the cost of life

Got the chance to try my axes too. Zombies and carapace guys just get destroyed and this is with total untrained scrubs lol
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 04, 2017, 10:35:22 am
Academy Nurse fails CQC check, shoot self and dies XD

Should I research Dr X now? I heard it unlocks a special mission, but in my last playthrough I did this Russian Files mission and barely won, it was full of tanks and power armor people with gauss so I'm afraid this one will too! :O
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Ethereal_Medic on August 04, 2017, 02:53:08 pm
Academy Nurse fails CQC check, shoot self and dies XD

Should I research Dr X now? I heard it unlocks a special mission, but in my last playthrough I did this Russian Files mission and barely won, it was full of tanks and power armor people with gauss so I'm afraid this one will too! :O

The Dr. X mission allows only the airbus or airvan to be used as vehicle.
You can only use shiv as your weapons.
Your gals can only wear nude/topless or rags.
Have fun :3
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Martin on August 04, 2017, 06:20:05 pm
High bravery is a must, it will be a dozen turns before you get to kill anything.

Your oposiiton is rather poorly armed and mostly poorly trained, so it is not too difficult.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Ethereal_Medic on August 04, 2017, 06:38:28 pm
Depends on the difficulty but yes the opponents pack mostly tranquilizer weaponry and melee weapons to stun your 6 (5) hands.
Best is to let everyone 'hide' a shiv in thier inventory and murder the guards spawned in the same room.
Quickly run to the basement and get the pickaxe.
Break the 'softer' walls to garther the squad and start digging through the base to the roof.
Bravery 80+ with overall high stats should do it.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 04, 2017, 06:38:58 pm
Aww man, I probably want to get some super soldiers before I try that one lol. I have 50-70 bravery on most of my people, only my pilots have 100 presumeably from shooting down ships. Any suggestions on how to raise it higher without swapping out pilots?

Sorry I have another question. I unlocked tac armour but I need aqua plastics for it which I think are the new personal armor parts. I know I can eventually buy them but I cant remember when they become available for purchase

I had 9 aqua plastics somehow so I mustve gotten some from somewhere. Does anyone know where they can be looted? I don't need many
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Ethereal_Medic on August 04, 2017, 06:42:03 pm
Warehouse raids net a free tac-vest from time to time.

Aqua-Plastics can be robbed/harvested from carapace-armored enemies. Those that can't be gunned down with basic shotguns.
The 'purchace' should be gated behind one of the expensive prices in the bountyhunting game.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: greattuna on August 04, 2017, 07:11:58 pm
#029 entry in bootypedia covers the ways of raising bravery: use medikits, pilot ships, go in combat naked (or almost naked).

For aqua plastics: rob\enslave armored guys (trader security, osiron people, etc.), or go raid a Sunken USO for hundreds of 'em. Purchase is locked behind "Prize: Military Supplies". Actually, you will need a fair amount, because you'll need plastics for heavy armor -> defender armor -> guardian suits, which are pretty solid mid-game armor, and some other things.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Kharim on August 04, 2017, 08:08:51 pm
Got a question about Nurse outfit. Somehow I can't replenish other Gals energy.
Also can You target with medikit? Specific situation: medic is standing over a wounded enemy, facing a wounded gal. Medikit automatically targets enemy beneath.

Sent with my ZAX 1.2

Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Yataka Shimaoka on August 04, 2017, 08:30:23 pm
That's how vanilla is, not in the mod. Got this problem too back when I still played the original
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 04, 2017, 09:39:47 pm
ty ty

You said the purchase is gated behind rare bounty hunting? Could you explain this to me please? I saw the briefing telling me I cant use armor or decent gear and decided it wasn't worth it so I haven't done any of them yet XD
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: khade on August 04, 2017, 10:01:35 pm
Bounty hunting is how you get access to better stuff, if you're limited it's so you can get close to enemies in situations where they're limited.  Only Spartans would go to a fancy dress party heavily armed, after all.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Yataka Shimaoka on August 05, 2017, 07:15:20 am
I agree with kade, after all it is always worth it to go to bounty hunts, too much loot
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 05, 2017, 10:31:44 am
What's some good gear to bring to my first bounty hunts? Any advice for me? I don't have dojos yet so I don't want to lose my high level troops. They have high stam, melee, TU and str so they make the general capture missions so much smoother and I would hate to lose any of them
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Yataka Shimaoka on August 05, 2017, 10:38:13 am
My only friends, the melee since the place is gonna tight, guns will be useless
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 05, 2017, 11:26:39 am
Can I bring axes in with me or are they restricted? Is shiv the best concealed weapon?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: greattuna on August 05, 2017, 11:33:49 am
No, an ax is not a concealed weapon.

The best concealed weapons would be force blades, mono-claws and ghost daggers; but you most likely don't have access to either and won't have for a long time, so just bring barbed\regular daggers, they're enough.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 05, 2017, 11:56:25 am
I had a bounty hunt and went with machetes and pirate clothes but when I got there it let me bring my shotguns and axes in, we wasted them pretty easily but that might've been a one off, the briefing didn't say we had to go plain clothes or anything

EDIT: I had the church one where we had to go casual. Pirate clothes were fine and the spiked daggers made short work of everything in our path. Thanks for all the advice! I might give mansion a go sometime which is something I was too terrified of last playthrough to even attempt
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: greattuna on August 05, 2017, 12:04:12 pm
The different missions have different requirements. :v

Sometimes you can only go in plain clothes with concealed weapons, one mission has you going with any armor that is helmet-less with concealed weapons. Most missions don't have restrictions.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 07, 2017, 11:17:35 am
Is there a way to see what tech I need to progress?

I really want to work towards:
defender/guardian/power armor
recoilless rifle
medical supply manufacturing
chemical manufacturing
big workshop
dojo and hot springs
hyperwave decoder

I've been stuck at tac armour H for a year and only have 5 since it's hard to get aqua plastics (done a few bounty hunts but it didn't unlock them for purchase. I need medical supply manufacturing to support a much bigger team, and dojos to train them so I can be more reckless with them. I need better armour to minimise injuries, a sickbay to improve wound recovery, and eventually I will need recoilless rifle and power armour to kill stronger enemies at a distance where they're less likely to instantly vaporize me with plasma or gauss. I just lost 4 people on a failed shrine ship and it takes forever to get newbies up to their standards while I'm lacking a dojo and the funds to train a large army of zergs, and I'd like to stop grinding every church and warehouse for funds

Problem is I have no idea what I'm lacking in order to progress. There's still stuff to research but I want to take my research in a specific direction, namely towards industry and training a large army (I can hold off on good gear so long as I have the supply of soldiers to throw into the meat grinder)

Is there some kind of built in tech tree, or a game file I can be reading to work out where I need to progress?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: JustTheDude/CABSHEP on August 07, 2017, 11:53:02 am
To have dojo you need research all Uber Gals "things"(like post-apocalyptic cousine etc) and their history related projects. I'm not sure did mutant alliance martial arts prize is needed or mayby it is shortcut.

To get aqua plastic fast and plenty go to "sea adventure" mission. If you'r lucky, you will get mission with crashed TFTD aliens ship and as a loot you will get +/- 200 aqua plastics.

I think joining mutant alliance will give you option to buy medical supplies. Another rute is destroying enemy base, becouse church cardinal should carry old earth books and that will give you "back to school" research what unlock(probably direct) pharmacology and this allow manufacturing medical supplies.

Power armor need so much so this is more late-game and I think there is no fast way to get one. You could always manufacture "scrapyard master" after reaserching power armor parts. It is unplugged power armor so it inflict stun damage but front armor is just like in normal power armor, or slighty worse.

 
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 07, 2017, 11:56:33 am
Thankyou for the good info! Do you know how to get defender/guardian or is it gated behind back to school?

I'm 1.5 years into the game and there still isn't any alien bases. Guess I'll keep assaulting shrine ships, maybe look outside and decide whether to bail if there is like 5 of those flying guys with 1 billion TU and swords right at my ship doors.

I did get the old earth book research but it was through an interrogation. I also just unlocked the martial arts tech which I am researching. I'll build 1 in my main base to help raise new arrivals and I am working on large scale alcohol production in my other bases to help pay for troops and maybe a dedicated training base
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: JustTheDude/CABSHEP on August 07, 2017, 01:25:17 pm
There probably are bases but they are sneaky. Check the charts and scan areas where funding was decreased by no reason.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KateMicucci on August 07, 2017, 04:35:44 pm
Middle click on researches to see the tech tree.

I tried the big army of dojo gals thing and it wasn't all that effective.

Healing up wounded gals isn't a big problem unless you're somebody who feels they need to do every mission and UFO. As long as you have enough for the brainers to research, enough money and supplies then ask if it's really worth the risk. What benefit are you getting from attacking shrine ships right now when you're so far behind in tech?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: ivandogovich on August 07, 2017, 05:00:05 pm
In the Research Tech Tree viewer, press "Q" to bring up "quick search."  Type Defender.  Select the armor topic, it will show you prereqs, and which you have, etc.  You can click back through them to see your bottleneck, etc.   In my experience, Defender armor is a late mid-game tech.  This can take 2-3 years.  You may have a lucky break and get "Military Transport" missions where Guild, Academy, Govt, Spartans, etc fly around in Gunships.  The last Heavy Gunship in the wave often has some freebie sets of armor including Defender Armor.  These can be a huge boost, but they are the luck of the draw (dependent on RNG to spawn the wave, dependent on your coverage of that area of the globe, and your ability to get there with a team that can take on strong enemy troops, etc.)
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 07, 2017, 05:08:36 pm
Well my research is stalling which is why I was looking for things to research and attacked a shrine ship.

This tech tree viewer is amazing, thankyou! Apparently I need prize mutant alliance favor to advance, not sure what this is or where to find it though, it wasn't in my last game I think
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Mechanique on August 07, 2017, 05:14:39 pm
Middle click on researches to see the tech tree.

I tried the big army of dojo gals thing and it wasn't all that effective.

Healing up wounded gals isn't a big problem unless you're somebody who feels they need to do every mission and UFO. As long as you have enough for the brainers to research, enough money and supplies then ask if it's really worth the risk. What benefit are you getting from attacking shrine ships right now when you're so far behind in tech?

Spa is relatively early tech (but a huge cost) and can be used to train up to 30 gals (the perfect number to have) and auxila, not to mention benefits of super-maids, extra healing that stacks with sickbay or surgery room, and interesting tactical opportunities on defense. Dojos are not worth it in my opinion, unless in secondary hideouts, and in late game - early/mid having 5 or 10 gal garrisons is a big money drain, and untrained auxila can't really stop a serious attack. Damn, I miss my 20-sized mercenaries, auxilaries suck.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 07, 2017, 05:22:58 pm
Well when I got my medical supply manufacturing going last game money was a thing of the past. I didn't bother to defend my factories I just replaced them when they got taken down which only happened once. That allowed me to have a rather large army of about 100 "hands" which were all trained in my arctic training base and moved from there to my main base. I had around 60 soldiers in my main base and another 60 in the training base at all times. I was also buying 100M costing VIPs for my research, I kept buying marsec bodyguards just to enslave them for power armor parts and I had over 1B in my 4th year. I got bored and quit during getting power cells for my conqueror and decided I would someday do it again but on the max difficulty which is what I am doing now, might as well do it properly XD

Anyway I worked out how to get favors, donated 1.5M to jack and got my bounty C pass. The air car races stopped appearing, I only attempted 1 after I started doing bounties and then realised it was a normal fight so I had my unarmed aircar pilot leave immediately and never saw another after that

I'll try to get higher level bounty passes asap since I have a feeling the bounty missions disappear as time goes by unless I keep progressing with them
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: wolfreal on August 07, 2017, 05:30:21 pm
Healing up wounded gals isn't a big problem unless you're somebody who feels they need to do every mission and UFO.

Oh, you don´t fill your mouth with everything on the table?. I have been playing this wrongly all the time xD
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Mechanique on August 07, 2017, 05:50:09 pm
Well when I got my medical supply manufacturing going last game money was a thing of the past. I didn't bother to defend my factories I just replaced them when they got taken down which only happened once. That allowed me to have a rather large army of about 100 "hands" which were all trained in my arctic training base and moved from there to my main base. I had around 60 soldiers in my main base and another 60 in the training base at all times. I was also buying 100M costing VIPs for my research, I kept buying marsec bodyguards just to enslave them for power armor parts and I had over 1B in my 4th year. I got bored and quit during getting power cells for my conqueror and decided I would someday do it again but on the max difficulty which is what I am doing now, might as well do it properly XD

Anyway I worked out how to get favors, donated 1.5M to jack and got my bounty C pass. The air car races stopped appearing, I only attempted 1 after I started doing bounties and then realised it was a normal fight so I had my unarmed aircar pilot leave immediately and never saw another after that

I'll try to get higher level bounty passes asap since I have a feeling the bounty missions disappear as time goes by unless I keep progressing with them

Are medical supplies really that profitable? From what I calculated based on checmicals value plus runt-hour costs the profit should be marginal, despite the hints in description. Same for durathread lingerie - it was like few dollars a piece unless you print your own duratheread, which I can't yet and thus can't calculate the profit.

For me it always was X-grog, or now is chateau du mort, since in new version apples are plentiful and pretty much guaranteed on ratman village/help the loknars/lokknar farm.

As for missions - D level does not dissapear completely, but as game progresses and you unlock more mission types, they have lower chance to spawn. I still get ocassional D level two years in.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KateMicucci on August 07, 2017, 06:04:15 pm
Aircar isn't a fight. You win the mission automatically if you press end-turn. The mission description is misleading.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 07, 2017, 07:03:21 pm
Aww that's a shame. I landed with my totally unarmed pilot, decided mistakes were made and aborted XD
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: greattuna on August 08, 2017, 12:21:20 am
Yeah it happens. I got lucky enough to be armed, so I rushed out thinking I'll have to defeat lone student in one turn.

RE: making money: yeah, chateau de mort is pretty solid early-game money-maker, but I switched over to chemicals as soon as I could, because chemicals doesn't require anything. Hassle-free money!.. now that I have mint and 4 thousand $1000 chips (I've been saving), I'm making $200 chips from them, since it gives me slightly more money per month. I'm going to keep printing money until I'll be able to make hovertanks, since selling tanks gives me more money than printing money... Hm.

RE: ancillaries: well it depends on auxillary itself, isn't it? Tanks can pull their own weight in combat, dogs are pretty okay in cramped quarters against unarmored enemies (but they require burrows now...), while slave soldiers... yeah. Shaping them into something requires loader armor, because it's about the only armor which gives some defense, and even then, their stats are sad aside from (potentially) voodoo.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 08, 2017, 01:32:28 am
So how do I get mutant alliance favors? The bounty C pass research didn't unlock it :/
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: greattuna on August 08, 2017, 01:39:34 am
Some favors have prerequisites. You have to make and research Prize: Mutant Martial Arts first before you can make Prize: Alliance Favors.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: legionof1 on August 08, 2017, 01:45:07 am
Yeah most of the auxilla are pretty poor when comes to front-line combat besides the tanks. Slaves are however pretty useful to reduce costs when used as support troops like medics and mortar crews. In the medic role you only need TU and stable morale to avoid panic. In the artillery support role the lower accuracy is of limited impact due to large aoe.

Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 08, 2017, 10:22:19 am
Ah ok, thankyou. Should I research the other favors?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 08, 2017, 10:56:37 am
Do I get points for shooting up megapol?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: kayelgee on August 08, 2017, 01:09:33 pm
Are medical supplies really that profitable? From what I calculated based on checmicals value plus runt-hour costs the profit should be marginal, despite the hints in description. ...

For me it always was X-grog, or now is chateau du mort, since in new version apples are plentiful and pretty much guaranteed on ratman village/help the loknars/lokknar farm.
I think you miscalculated medical supplies(you might've overlooked that you get 10 med supplies per batch) because it's on par with chateau without the need to get apples so you can build multiple bases producing it. Once you have a lot of runts(200+) producing medical supplies you should consider producing your own chems on site so you can get ~10% more profit and be better than chateau.

Can someone tell me why I should bother with the mint? I've run the numbers and 200$, 1000$ and 2000$ chips are ~40% more profitable than X Grog whereas Medical Supplies are around twice as profitable. Was the mint way better before 0.99G?
I haven't unlocked plastic, gold and obisidian chips cracking but unless plastic chips are godlike I don't think it's worth it over medical supplies ever.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Ethereal_Medic on August 08, 2017, 03:15:12 pm
The most efficiency for the mint is smelting ore into 50k chips and break 50k into 20k chips.
Everything below is better served by selling chem or med-supplies.

A rather new addition is a producable tank (M1A1) once you've build the armory. That badboy brings 1M profit every sold unit.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Yataka Shimaoka on August 08, 2017, 04:20:01 pm
Ooooooh! Me likey  that!
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Martin on August 08, 2017, 04:51:36 pm
Tanks can pull their own weight in combat,

Four gals bring more firepower than single tank and can spread out as needed. I would only consider tanks if I lucked into the tech early so could send them out against weak dudes who have no way of penetrating one.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: SomeGuy on August 08, 2017, 09:44:52 pm
I like to always have a tank at any battle, they're good at absorbing bullets and being distractions since they instantly get repaired at the end of the mission (like stepping out of the ship on the first turn). But really depends on the mission, facing off against Mercs with gauss weapons usually make Swiss cheese of the tank but depends on the type of the tank. But they're cheap enough to mass produce.

Though, I have had some times when the tank came in handy, like shot down a heavy freighter and brought in the flak cannon tank, sure it couldn't take out the other 4 or so tanks effectively but it completely destroyed the upper hallway which is always filled with enemies. Or cross map howtizer tank shots to save gals from other tanks.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Ethereal_Medic on August 08, 2017, 10:48:57 pm
Best strat against mercs is to not go into a firefight at all.
Just nuke every square of the battlefield.

Tanks become rather obsolete once you've the armor to just field very beefy gals and the best medical tools and cake.
In terms of bio-suits and bio-suits mk2 tanks trade thier role completely for more hands with indirect fire support.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 10, 2017, 02:09:48 pm
So am I ok to shoot down Megapol? I'd like more points and infamy bonus since megapol doesnt give much money, but if shooting down and enslaving the wolfbros actually gives me points I'll keep doing it since they're easy and nice exp

I have a few more questions please

1) Just how long do I have before I lose the game? I know crackdown missions start to happen even when you are deliberately avoiding aggro, when do they start? How long before sway government starts the countdown to doom?

It's a shame that losing governments or getting negative scores still causes a hard-fail state and that crackdowns can occur independent of my activity, it would be nice if I could support myself on piracy and illegal manufacturing and play smart to avoid the heat, rather than having a "governments all hate you now so game over" moment after a few years or if I'm keeping too much of a low profile. Still I'd like to know how much time I've got, I don't want to rush the game too much and would like to skip missions that are easy since I'm producing enough x-grog to cover my expenses now, but I don't want to skip a lot of missions and then lose the game while I'm building the conqueror because the governments pull funding and then the text box of doom informs me that my bases have been erased and I have to start all over again and grind through more missions next time. I could get my medical supply industry, training base and research base going faster if I keep doing these 100-200K missions but I'd really rather skip them for the high value ones like the passenger ferries and churches, and the high infamy/point bonus missions like scientific experiments, lok-nar and ratmen which I can usually speed through with shotguns, grenade launchers and mortar shelling (the latter is highly amusing, the map ends up resembling This War of Mine although it's a waste of resources)

2) I'm thinking of preparing for some underwater and zero G missions. There might be more tech there and I can get more points and a faster rise in monthly income plus the infamy bonuses. What transport ship and equipment are very good for those missions? I still don't have a full training base, only 2 dojos in my main base so my troops aren't exactly expendable yet, I will need a large income and a dedicated training base before I can have such a large number of troops and fast replacement rate that I can send them in wearing bikinis and wielding harpoon guns, so I'd like something that will improve their survivability, let me kill the enemies effectively and relatively safely, and perhaps take the odd captive. I was thinking of trying to get a transport craft that can carry a lot of personnel and then using some kind of vehicles as my primary units since although they are expensive they don't require long training times and don't drive up the wages of my hands. Is there some kind of submarine or spaceship unit I should get for this, or are underwater and zero G missions quite easy?

3) Do I have to unlock all of the Prize research? Mutant Alliance favors was gated behind mutant martial arts which isn't intuitive, and since I already had dojos I would've never touched that until after I had all my manufacturing bases ready and ran out of things to research unless I had noticed mutant alliance favors in the tech tree and asked how to unlock it. Is there any other key tech that's really hard to find unless someone points you towards it? I really wouldn't mind if it took me years of playing to find it, but since the campaign is on a time limit, if I miss out on crucial tech til a few years in when the governments start to leave me and my campaign is about to be ended then I'll lose all of my progress and have to start all over again (this is why I hate the time limit, I would love to figure all this stuff out by myself without asking, it would've been exciting to find all the tech gated behind mutant alliance favors without expecting it, but I cant just jump into underwater and zero G missions and lose lots of people or research things randomly because it could set me back and sink my entire campaign when the time limit catches me)
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 10, 2017, 02:12:36 pm
Actually I have an idea. Does anyone know if it's possible to edit the files to completely remove sway local government and random crackdowns, and make it so that low level missions are available throughout the entire game? That way there would be no time limit and I can just sit back, enjoy the experience, jump into unknown missions and get totally massacred and not be anxious that it could sink my entire 200+ hour campaign
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Ethereal_Medic on August 10, 2017, 03:55:49 pm
1.) You lose the game once 8 (or more) 'countries' stop paying you. You lose once all your bases are gone or you fail to succeed in the final marathon mission to take cydonia.
Honorable mention that you'll lose the game with two months in a row with huge negative credits or bad performance.
2.) Underwater mssions can be quite dangerous against sharkmen and deep ones. The first been fast enough to ambush you and chomp your squad while deep ones can use projectile weaponry to play around close range. For Zero-G missions the smaller ones can be done with just recscue-pods but the bigger maps with more enemies should be dealt with using either superhero-armor or basic space-suits to use items rather than just the close range flamethrower and a medkit.

Shooting down enemy crafts (once you dominate every single ship encounter with firepower) net enough score points to skip every mission in the late game.
3.) You can check the research tree-viewer for further informations to proceed the campaign. It's activated by using the third mouse button (mouse-wheel) and pressed onto a research topic while looking into the research labority. Progression in research is bound to the research buildings and the topics. "Back to School" "School Graduation" and "Higher Studies".

There is no timelimit for the ultimate doom to come. The game will become harder for sure but it's not comparable to the remakes of 2012+ where the aliens keep getting more and more health and fielding larger pods barely managable by the 8man squadsize.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Mechanique on August 10, 2017, 04:50:51 pm
Quote
1) Just how long do I have before I lose the game? I know crackdown missions start to happen even when you are deliberately avoiding aggro, when do they start? How long before sway government starts the countdown to doom?

It's a shame that losing governments or getting negative scores still causes a hard-fail state and that crackdowns can occur independent of my activity, it would be nice if I could support myself on piracy and illegal manufacturing and play smart to avoid the heat, rather than having a "governments all hate you now so game over" moment after a few years or if I'm keeping too much of a low profile. Still I'd like to know how much time I've got, I don't want to rush the game too much and would like to skip missions that are easy since I'm producing enough x-grog to cover my expenses now, but I don't want to skip a lot of missions and then lose the game while I'm building the conqueror because the governments pull funding and then the text box of doom informs me that my bases have been erased and I have to start all over again and grind through more missions next time. I could get my medical supply industry, training base and research base going faster if I keep doing these 100-200K missions but I'd really rather skip them for the high value ones like the passenger ferries and churches, and the high infamy/point bonus missions like scientific experiments, lok-nar and ratmen which I can usually speed through with shotguns, grenade launchers and mortar shelling (the latter is highly amusing, the map ends up resembling This War of Mine although it's a waste of resources)

Sway government missions are stopped by *family ties* tech, relatively early one. After that as long as you have positive scores every month, you will continue to get increased funding. So you have as much time as you want, late game you can avoid ground missions altogether by shooting down large vessels into the ocean, and just do the ones you want. Even mid-game you can skip like half of missions as long as you do few high-score ones. I find that around 3k points per month worth of missions is enough to cover any random excavations or -500 points heavy freights, as long as you don't need to rely on infamy bonus for income. My first run took around 4 years to complete, you don't have to rush things.

Quote
2) I'm thinking of preparing for some underwater and zero G missions. There might be more tech there and I can get more points and a faster rise in monthly income plus the infamy bonuses. What transport ship and equipment are very good for those missions? I still don't have a full training base, only 2 dojos in my main base so my troops aren't exactly expendable yet, I will need a large income and a dedicated training base before I can have such a large number of troops and fast replacement rate that I can send them in wearing bikinis and wielding harpoon guns, so I'd like something that will improve their survivability, let me kill the enemies effectively and relatively safely, and perhaps take the odd captive. I was thinking of trying to get a transport craft that can carry a lot of personnel and then using some kind of vehicles as my primary units since although they are expensive they don't require long training times and don't drive up the wages of my hands. Is there some kind of submarine or spaceship unit I should get for this, or are underwater and zero G missions quite easy?

Jellyfish for underwater missions, if you didn't fuck up with your codex choice - it's free gun is really good on open maps and works underwater. The crew limit is not much of a limit too, those missions are always trivial and can be done by like 2-3 high-accuracy gals. And don't go with bikinis, reaseach chiller (which is inconsistently named as exploration outfit) instead to not be limited by time and avoid expending TUs on oxygen tanks. 0-G just require a lot of firepower, and can be accessed early by your menace - again if you did not fuck up with codex choice-  or pachyderm, accessible from Authorized Dealers that is gated behind Zaxx's favors. Bring rockets for easy win, don't get hit if you are doing it in pods.

Quote
3) Do I have to unlock all of the Prize research? Mutant Alliance favors was gated behind mutant martial arts which isn't intuitive, and since I already had dojos I would've never touched that until after I had all my manufacturing bases ready and ran out of things to research unless I had noticed mutant alliance favors in the tech tree and asked how to unlock it. Is there any other key tech that's really hard to find unless someone points you towards it? I really wouldn't mind if it took me years of playing to find it, but since the campaign is on a time limit, if I miss out on crucial tech til a few years in when the governments start to leave me and my campaign is about to be ended then I'll lose all of my progress and have to start all over again (this is why I hate the time limit, I would love to figure all this stuff out by myself without asking, it would've been exciting to find all the tech gated behind mutant alliance favors without expecting it, but I cant just jump into underwater and zero G missions and lose lots of people or research things randomly because it could set me back and sink my entire campaign when the time limit catches me)

Well, they are not crucial for ending the campaign. Favors prizes, while their pre-requisites are counter-intuintive, are pretty good to have. Dr.Wang's "armaments" that is gated behind those, Jack's I think, is especially good. As for key techs - there is at least dozen. While all key items can be found normally be doing various mission types, there is one important that is gated behind X storyline, so make sure to do that. Also, Russian Files tech from Cyberia mission, that can be accessed after guild rep interogation.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 10, 2017, 05:39:05 pm
Thanks Mechanique for the detailed response. I shall have to aim for family ties asap to remove the time limit

I chose gold codex so it seemed I fucked it up lol. I do have an underwater vessel but I don't think my equipment would be any good for it so I'll have to do more research. What kind of rocket launcher should I use for the 0-G mission? Just a normal rocket launcher?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: greattuna on August 10, 2017, 07:24:26 pm
Yeah, it's not like you have any choice in the matter lol. Though I tend to instead go with lasguns and axes.

Oh, and for underwater missions you don't need much either, just bring axes (again), ranged weapons of your choice and spikeballs. Throw spikeballs at enemies until they die. Win.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 10, 2017, 08:04:44 pm
Thanks. Just had a bounty mission where I needed to stop a mage escaping from a city. We got to the escape craft but the door wouldn't open. We ended up shelling it a few times with mortars and evacced after that. No idea how I was supposed to do that one :/
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Ethereal_Medic on August 10, 2017, 08:13:12 pm
One tile of the ship-floor is destroyable.
A rare opportunity to use the timer with 1 turn delay for explosion.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 10, 2017, 09:05:01 pm
Thankyou, should I put a bomb underneath it? What  would you recommend, high explosive?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: SomeGuy on August 10, 2017, 09:34:35 pm
I place the bombs next to the doors then get my gals ready to reaction shoot everything inside. High explosives are good enough I think.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: greattuna on August 10, 2017, 09:40:43 pm
I think I've already said this, but I just place two high explosives at the door, first blows up the door, second - everyone inside.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: JustTheDude/CABSHEP on August 11, 2017, 01:53:30 am
Or use Auto-Ax on door and stun everyone in ship with stun granade. If they are civilians onboard and you kill them, you will get negative points. The chapest and most profitable way.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 11, 2017, 02:50:17 am
Well I used 1 high explosive and dogs came out. Wish I had used 2 XD. Fortunately one dog was shot by reaction fire and the other caused only minor wounds even though it hit a lot, then I got my guard dog capture.

Btw I KOd a drone earlier, it went to sleep. I'm sure I tried to KO a drone in the previous patch and it simply broke, but these two drones dropped in a single hit each with a handle and dropped down with the ZZZ text above them, so strange XD
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: legionof1 on August 11, 2017, 05:49:53 am
At somepoint a number of mechanical units became stun-able with the right weapons.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: SomeGuy on August 11, 2017, 10:00:24 am
At somepoint a number of mechanical units became stun-able with the right weapons.

Handles, can always trust a handle to get the job done.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 11, 2017, 01:33:26 pm
Hehe, I'll try stunning more robots then

Does anyone know where I can find a human powered armour? Is it an item I get from humans who are wearing powered armour or do I need to find a suit that nobody is wearing?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Ethereal_Medic on August 11, 2017, 02:48:58 pm
Hehe, I'll try stunning more robots then

Does anyone know where I can find a human powered armour? Is it an item I get from humans who are wearing powered armour or do I need to find a suit that nobody is wearing?

Research powerarmor parts.
That should do the trick.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 11, 2017, 03:38:48 pm
I'll try to find some. I had a landed craft with some marsec bodyguards in year 1 but I haven't seen any since. I had warrior armour and ol shotguns back then so I just aborted, but now I have GLs I can kill nearly anything, especially since my surviving people have 100-120 aim by now

BTW if Dioxine is reading this I found a glitch. If you put 8 people in the shadowbat then the 8th person is erased from the game permanently and doesn't appear in the mission or on the memorial. I never tried 9 people because after I did this twice and realised the shadowbat was erasing my people I stopped doing it. I lost 2 of my people this way T_T

Fortunately 3 of my replacements are up to my bare minimum standards and the new defender armour is making them easy to train. By the time they're TU and strength maxed with 100+ stam the other 6 trainees should be ready for some field training so I think I'll pull through if I play it carefully, I only have 7 good soldiers besides them left now tho if I recall my 2 aircar pilots (They're just there for aircar races) I'll have a couple more ready for field training too
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: SomeGuy on August 11, 2017, 05:07:46 pm
Should've applied chainsaw and/or hammer to the bodyguards, that does the trick real nicely, I even always buy an extra 3 chainsaws when I can early game. Helps deal with lobstermen if you encounter them during a pogrom.

As for the shadow bat bug, it's already known about, think Dioxine said it'll be fixed next update. Or what if it isn't a bug? What if shadowtech is powered by the life energy of your gals and requires a sacrifice at the start of every mission?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 11, 2017, 08:24:59 pm
Now that you mention it I captured a humanist instructor during a pogrom. We locked him in one of the elevator rooms with one grenade launcher girl blocking the lift and wounded girl blocking the door. We carried him into the room and woke him up so that he wouldnt die from system shock since I really wanted that guy. Anyway halfway through the mission I noticed he was gone from the room. We cleared the rest of the map and never saw him. I had my grenadier deliberately looking away from him and my wounded girl too so he wouldnt waste time moving during enemy turn but it seems as if wires came down from the ceiling and dragged him into the hull to be devoured while our backs were turned >.>
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 11, 2017, 11:07:39 pm
Damn, it's sep year 2 and the crackdowns have started. They targetted my first medical supply base and wiped it out, I have another one being constructed but that's a large portion of all the money I have made this game gone and it never even got chance to pay me back. If I'm about to start losing a base every month now I might have to restart

The worst loss was the surgery units. It takes 3 to make a surgery room now, and I haven't had any scientific experiments missions for half a year I think they might have permanently stopped. Will I never get any more surgery units now?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: JustTheDude/CABSHEP on August 11, 2017, 11:22:30 pm
Did you get him as loot? Sometimes weapon sprite is showed instead of body if they are on the same square. I don't think waking up stuned foes is good idea. Handles and stun buttons don't do much overstun to kill victim so stuned in frist round will remain alive for more than 20 turns. If you want to be sure, use manacles. Especially, when trying capture ghouls or other regenerative enemies. During my playthroughs I never had problems with dying stuned targets.

Surgery rooms can be found in alien bases and some bigger ships. Mayby your base building design is bad, if you have that much of a problem defending them. Besides army of newbies there should always be veteran with weapon that could easily kill power armor foe. Loader suit is avialible early, it have good armor, and gal don't need to be strong to carry big weapon.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 11, 2017, 11:52:45 pm
There was no one at the base so it was taken without a fight. The more troops you have the more wages you must pay them, plus they need equipment. Unless I have my med supply bases setup I can't afford the wages since the more troops you have the more exhorbitant their weekly wages become due to the way ranks work in this game. The idea was to just put a hideout shroud down and avoid making too much aggro, only shootdown ships if they have something I need and try to wait til they are far away from my base before I shoot them down. It was a deep one crackdown which is strange because I haven't seen any deep ones in this game so far and definetly didnt shoot any of their ships.

I can't pick up surgery units right? Alien bases are well beyond me and the aliens still haven't built any. I hope the ships that carry surgery units aren't the v large ones full of tanks, power armor, chrysalids, cyberdisks, psionics etc

Man, it's like 3 crackdowns a month, I have a feeling I'm supposed to have top tier ships and be preparing for the final battle by now, maybe I took too long and should've done more of the missions, rushed the medical supplies tech, gotten my production bases and built a research base
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: greattuna on August 12, 2017, 12:17:25 am
Loader suit is avialible early, it have good armor, and gal don't need to be strong to carry big weapon.

While I agree that loader suit is a good suit (even more, it's the best one for slave soldiers!), it doesn't give very good protection versus plasma. Nothing gives actually, besides some late-game armor, bio suit and maybe guardian suit. Also, loader requires power armor parts, which are in short supply.

18 months before auto-crackdowns is a pretty tight time limit, but you should've expected that when you picked highest difficulty possible. Most factions can take a shot at your bases. Each month a random continent\region will get picked as their target, and they can miss the base, but you should have some forces at all bases no matter what. Train your troops, give them plasma-resistant armor, buy\ship\make damaging close-range weapons, melee weapons (ax!) and explosives, bolster your forces with ancillaries, and keep your interceptor fleet on stand-by to shoot down weaker ships of searching party.

I think you may have an alien base already, because by that point I had two bases. Fly a pigeon to search 'em out maybe? Though you won't be able to really take a base on yet, especially if it's manned by one of the tougher factions. Some ships do contain a surgery unit, but IIRC they're mostly located on upper end of the spectrum.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 12, 2017, 12:34:41 am
I didnt think auto crackdowns would be at 18 months, I was expecting it to be more like 3 years in or something. My plan was to garrison my manufacturing bases with troops from the training base, I was going to build the workshop bases first, use the money to buy the training base, then ship the new troops to those bases and use the money to buy good gear for them. There were people on some topics saying it's ok to skip missions so I figured that time wasn't THAT short and I would be ok for a while

I'm still at hunter killer sadly. I don't know of any armor that's strong vs plasma and since it's base damage is very high I would need something with both high armor and high plasma resistance I think. I have about 8 well trained troops left and another 10 training in the 2 dojos I have in my main base. I do have hundreds of slaves but I heard they're really bad as fighters. Basically I've been in the middle of building my business empire, discovered that surgery rooms require surgery units that I can't buy now, and then lost one of my only 2 manufacturing bases with the crackdowns having already begun. I have a hunter-killer but there's very little it can actually shoot down. Sway local govt missions started this month but I managed to finish family ties so at the very least they can't kick the govts out from under me, but it seems like I'm rapidly heading for a situation where either all my bases except my main base will be taken out and I'll be crippled for income permanently, or my main base will be taken out if my 8 defender armor elites and 8 halfway trained soldiers armed with heavy shotguns, axes, recoilless rifles and advanced GL can't stop them
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Ethereal_Medic on August 12, 2017, 12:47:50 am
Dealing with base defences is a matter of equipment, moral and base layout:
Have a single chokepoint to squeeze your foes through. Have your barracks and vaults close to the chokepoint.
Give everyone a melee weapon and explosives.
Use flamethrowers and firebombs to break morale.
Get panzerfausts (Panzerfäuste) to deal with HWPs and discs. While small blast radius it certainly comes cheap, is instantly consumed and does enough damage to be relevant.
In case you know what faction attacks, brace yourself with the most efficient weaponry to deal with them.

Also the new corridor is able to choke the sewer path.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: greattuna on August 12, 2017, 01:00:37 am
3 years would made things too easy. I'm at 3rd year right now and only month away from unlocking gauss weapons, days away from getting savior suits, already have bio suit, guardian armor, tanks, whole 1 (one) syn, variety of laser weapons, simple hellerium explosives, 4 bases, no problem with money (even if I run out, I can just sell some of my spare parts, which worth millions), etc. etc.

Skipping some missions is ok, but you shouldn't slack off too much when you just start, or you'll be in a pickle. Even as you start, you need to gather as much as you can, so you could expand as fast as possible, and on (captain) jack sparrow, you can't afford to take your time.
Slaves are bad as fighters, but they're cheap, and bad fighters > no fighters. Just give them something like military shotguns and panzerfausts, and pray they won't hit each other.

16 gals is really not a lot people, I think I had more at year 1, since somebody had to replace the wounded. Maybe you should consider expanding your forces. And why are you still using heavy shotguns? They can't penetrate armor at all.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 12, 2017, 01:16:36 am
Well I don't see many armoured enemies. Shotguns can handle ratmen, researchers, GOs, spartans, humanists etc in 1-2 shots with even low aim, and are accurate at halfway across the map with high aim. The only enemies I can't really take out with them are osiron security, marsec operatves, guild security, marsec wolfmen/pigmen, etc but I do 90% of my killing with GLs

Usually I have 2 GL people in the lifts and 4 shotgunners at the doors. The shotgunners open the doors and shot at anything low armoured, killing quite a few. The GLers go up the lifts, fire grenades at anything while prioritising heavy armour and dangerous weapons then go back down the elevator. This ensures that the only fire the enemy gets is the odd reaction fire and with our armour we're usually ok. If I'm afraid they might hit hard such as with heavy machine guns, recoilless rifles, rocket launchers, laser guns or cellatids then I spot the enemy and fire a grenade over our ship control room, and stay aware of how is faced towards us and away from us so I know who can possibly reaction shot, especially if I miss or fail to kill

If the enemy is refusing to step into range then I swap one of my grenadiers into a mortar and start shelling where I think they are til they come out or I get them, when they're down to 2 left I get bug hunt mode and can just shell where the minimap tells me they are until I get them. While I go for 100% captures on civvie ships or easy maps like church, warehouse wars, scientific experiments etc, the other maps I usually turn into a smoking heap of rubble, you don't even want to know what the pogrom maps look like when I'm finished with them!

Anyway I picked Superhuman because I did UFO defense on superhuman ironman and I didnt think it was very hard past the first 2 months. I did the last build of piratez on 3rd difficulty up to when I was making the conqueror and grinding mercs for synthmuscle parts. It really wasn't that hard but I didn't get half as many crackdowns, it took much longer for the crackdowns to begin, and I didnt need surgery units to make medical supplies so it was simple enough to replace lost bases
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: legionof1 on August 12, 2017, 04:11:20 am
Piratez IMO isn't well tuned for max difficulty. The current early game is so regimented that any advantage you might garner from additional drops/captures is largely useless. All the tech gateing basically prevents any capitalization on big mission successes unlike older versions. All you get is a punishing start with extra inevitable casualties that is very difficult to offset since training takes so much time and resources to setup.

I personally play with scaling difficulty. I start on 3 and edit my save to increase difficulty by one step after certain major gate techs.   
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KateMicucci on August 12, 2017, 07:05:16 am
Dealing with base defences is a matter of equipment, moral and base layout:
Have a single chokepoint to squeeze your foes through. Have your barracks and vaults close to the chokepoint.
Give everyone a melee weapon and explosives.
Use flamethrowers and firebombs to break morale.
Get panzerfausts (Panzerfäuste) to deal with HWPs and discs. While small blast radius it certainly comes cheap, is instantly consumed and does enough damage to be relevant.
In case you know what faction attacks, brace yourself with the most efficient weaponry to deal with them.

Also the new corridor is able to choke the sewer path.

I'm not so sure that a choke is an advantage rather than a disadvantage. Enemies love to hang around the hangars without advancing into your base so much that you end up having to clear them out, and deal with subrifle reaction fire.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: legionof1 on August 12, 2017, 07:21:22 am
It is a mixed bag strategy certainly on max difficulty since it hinges on wipeing out the majority of foes in the elevator vicinity leaving the remainder demoralized and weak. The extra foes on max tend to limit the impact.

Of course alternative strats haven't really been explored much since this has been the gold standard for base defense since original vanilla. Maybe time to reexamine the wheel?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 12, 2017, 10:36:55 am
Well there's not really enough space to squander imo. Main base I am thinking of deleting some building to build a large barracks so I can delete 1 more barracks for the CPU core which I will eventually need, but then I need to get a study room from somewhere and might have to delete a workshop or a dojo, which would be awful since a training base certainly isn't on the horizon and my main base is one of the few which can currently produce medical supplies

I gave it some thought and the game might still be salvageable. If I can make a push for nightmare and produce one then I can shoot down the majority of crackdown ships. If I build 4 shrouds in my medical base, and I transfer all my troops and equipment to any base that has crackdown ships appearing nearby then even if a crackdown occurs my A team will be there waiting for them.

Only question is where I am going to get surgery units from to replace my lost base and finish my other manufacturing bases. I might need to build something else that doesn't require such rare materials. Any idea what else is profitable? X-Grog seems to barely pay for the maintenance of each base and runts, and with a tiny profit on top of that, I can't run a decent sized army off of that profit or replace any bases that I do lose

Did some digging. Barracuda isn't far off, has higher damage soaking, is faster and has an additional light weapon. It loses missiles but missiles are currently too expensive. If I push for that and make two of them they can probably put out enough damage to drop the smaller enemy craft. Only 1 pilot each required so my hunter-killer pilots can handle them. I'll be pushing for nightmare when I finally get powered armor parts. Any ideas on what is good to handle the bigger crafts? I was thinking of using the kraken or crab for tanking. Kraken is twice as tough and crab is 50% faster and more likely to actually reach the battle. I'm not sure what to use as my primary damage dealer tho since I don't think light weapons will do the damage and missiles are too few, perhaps a heavy weapon focused ship? The dragon has 4 HW slots but is a long way off, the Kraken is very close with 1 less HW slot and very tough so able to do some tanking.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Ethereal_Medic on August 12, 2017, 12:24:51 pm
X-Grog seems to barely pay for the maintenance of each base and runts, and with a tiny profit on top of that, I can't run a decent sized army off of that profit or replace any bases that I do lose

Try selling chemicals (x25). More profit and requires only an extractor and a refinery.
100 runts as an example for profit calculation:
Chemicals: 3.1M / month
X-Grog: 1.6M / month

Chemicals net twice the profit.
Bases without alcohol production can mass produce Bikinis.
Bikini: 0.9M / month

Those are my strats that need no maintaince of supplies to look at since the projects cost no materials to produce. Invest money to get more money.

The baracuda is a lovely ship. Try get a light shield generator for each of your ships to reduce maintance time and increase durability.
Arm it with 3 lascannons. Mid-late game ships should be easy dealt with using 3-4 baracudas depending on the size and class of the ship.

Once money is easy to stack and you've the 2nd/best fighter of the game, build as many nightmare/sabre in the key locations of the globe to react to any enemy encounter.
Arm them with 2x lascannons or 1x lascannon and 1x tesla coil as finishers and use the "Medusa Rocket" to blast the shippings out of the skies.
The medusa launcher and rockets can only be gained from the black market and are not too expensive to be hooked onto the whole fleet.
Using mass Sabres and Nightmares can deal with every ship in the game except the "Silver Towers". But this vessel looks very optional to fight.
Yes it has the SG Leader on board but there're other ways to get one.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 12, 2017, 02:20:51 pm
Thankyou for the excellent info! I think I will try to get a SG leader from a smuggler ship like last time. I had no idea interceptors could take down large and v large vessels even in groups of 4. I'll make a push for shield generator. If I can get a lot of barracudas with 1 s gen and some 50mm cannons it should allow me to swamp and deal with the small ships at least like fighters I think. All the other L guns are gated, I need power armor parts for school graduation and I'm just not seeing any power armor enemies anywhere. Fortunately a base was finally built (eurasian autonomy left me, I guess family ties doesn't count for sway local gov that started before I finish the research, probably just stops the mission from happening in future). I'll try to get the base supply ships, camp for 20 turns and finish the map, see if I can find any power armor guys among the survivors of the explosion.

I can already make refineries and have quite a few, I'll switch over to chemical production, thanks!
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Ethereal_Medic on August 12, 2017, 02:54:00 pm
I'll try to get the base supply ships, camp for 20 turns and finish the map, see if I can find any power armor guys among the survivors of the explosion.

I don't wanna spoiler you but I highly recommend you to not camp a supply ship.
You're FORCED to take quick actions against those. They selfdestruct at the start of turn 20 or 21, causing an auto-retreat like the mansion-style missions.
Everyone outside the ship is MIA and if you have no gal in your dropship it counts as ship lost too.
Camping a supplyship 20 turns is the reason why this feature was implemented and I think it's a smart choice since the factions strictly tries to deny thier goods to pirates, thus nuking it is way more appealing than leaving a handfull of survivors to duke it out.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 12, 2017, 03:10:04 pm
Well I knew they blew up since it happened in the previous version I played (2 versions ago). But the mission didnt auto-end and I was free to mop up

Can I go to those missions, camp the base til the last turn and wait for a power armor guy to get close and then jump out, cut him into pieces with axes and tech blades, then drag his body into the ship and get power armor parts that way? Does the corpse count as the power armor loot or does it take a successful mission to get the power armor parts? If so then the only other thing I can think of is to try to capture 2 of them, research 1 and then enslave the other for the parts as loot.

Meanwhile I'm working towards mercenary contacts, I remember last version you could buy marsec bodyguard captives, I'll buy 2 if I have to tho it would suck up a lot of cash
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Ethereal_Medic on August 12, 2017, 04:48:50 pm
A dead bodyguard is converted into power armor parts.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 12, 2017, 05:25:55 pm
But if I kill a bodyguard, grab his corpse and bring it into the ship and retreat, will I get the power armor parts, or do I have to finish the mission?

Btw does anyone have any recommendations on defensible ships? I try to keep my people alive and the most effective way to do it I find is to engage the enemy from my ship

I've been using the Shadowbat but I have a few issues with it:
Glitch means I can bring 7 people max
Can't see underneath the wings from on top of them, meaning enemies can stand under and surprise me if they can fly (church exalt. Chrysalids or dogs running into my ship with their high TU)
Landing ramp let's me see in 3 direction, but the one we cant see is a bit of a blind corner that we need to step around in order to see around and can result in me being ambushed. Staircases on the ramp slow down our movement stepping in and out, and require people on the stairs to crouch in order to see through the door
Requires 4 people to effectively block the doorways (2 if only the stairs) and this leaves me terrified of AoE weapon reaction fire
Control room blocks vision from the wings meaning a flying enemy can hug the small blind spot on the back and ambush

But it has quite a few advantages too:
4 people can fire from the doorways without moving, 2 can fire from the elevators moving only up and down.
Elevators give a high up (level 2) vision of the battlefield from the very beginning and make it easier to connect with arcing explosives over a long distance without risk of return fire
Inner staircase is a strong chokepoint, allowing us to camp the elevator rooms, enemies coming up the stairs have to burn a lot of TUs, we will hear the doors opening if there aren't other sliding doors
Fairly spacious inside, I can keep people spread a bit if I need to
Can keep a couple of people in the control room and bring them down if an enemy comes inside, less risk (saved me from an exalt massacre when they came in though the elevators, these 2 survived)
Can stand on the wings and block the elevators, renders dogs, werewolves and lids ineffective
Well lit outside (night is more of an obstruction to me than the enemy)
Inside favors melee (usually my advantage)
I don't think vehicles can get up the stairs since they're pressed against the doors, means we can bait infantry inside while leaving tanks, reapers, cyberdiscs etc outside
Item pile is nowhere near the doors, not so likely to be vaporized by explosives
The control room as an obstacle means we can fire at enemies without reaction fire by launching grenades over the top of the control room

Does anyone have suggestions on other good defensive ships? What I really would like is:
1) Around 10 people
2) Bigger ship, means we can spread out more and camp positions effectively in the event that we need to lure enemies inside to melee them
3) More elevators
4) Better vision all around
5) High and broader rooftop with elevator access, means we can keep a mortar up there permanently and not have it fired upon except by flyers

I really doubt there's actually anything better than this, the shadowbat is a total deathtrap and if not for the glitch it would be extremely OP I think. Just wondering if anyone has any other good defensive suggestions. Or maybe pics of the ships on the battlescape?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: greattuna on August 12, 2017, 06:06:52 pm
Yes, you can grab a corpse and it will register. Anything that is inside your craft when you retreat will.

Any craft with doors is defensible, but if you want something with ~elevators~, look no further than conqueror! It has no less than 12 elevators for gals and 1 for your tank, can field 36 soldiers, looks awesome and can even take you to Cydonia! The only problem is that is end-game craft, and you'll need a lot of money and a lot of resources to build it.

Now seriously, very few crafts rely on elevators. You might want to try out jellyfish, but it's probably codex-locked. I personally use turtle (pictured on a screenshot), it can carry 12 people, requires no fuel, and can with a little (3 reticulan fusion reactors basically) investment reach 2950 speed, AND it's also available to users of golden codex! It looks pretty simple, but these doors provide a lot for those who are willing to camp a little. Step out of a door, fire a bit, step back inside. Repeat until surroundings are safe.

It's still my mainstay dropship, mainly because I wasn't researching crafts too much. Though I did get to the TRITON, which is pretty good secondary craft. Uses no fuel, carries 15 people, has only 1 huge door, which is not very convenient...
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: sinisteragent on August 12, 2017, 06:58:34 pm
Ugh. Cowardly pirates.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: SomeGuy on August 12, 2017, 07:04:41 pm
Leave ship turn 1 or don't leave the ship at all! But in all honesty, leaving the ship on turn one isn't all that bad. . . excluding Siberian base. . . heavy freighter, any star god shipping . . .and that's about it. Oh, and mercenaries I guess.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: greattuna on August 12, 2017, 07:06:55 pm
Well, I don't want to eat a nuke on turn one, or at all, sorry. Otherwise I don't really camp that much, since there's no need to, but when I do, simple doors are a godsend.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: wolfreal on August 12, 2017, 09:53:54 pm
But if I kill a bodyguard, grab his corpse and bring it into the ship and retreat, will I get the power armor parts, or do I have to finish the mission?

Btw does anyone have any recommendations on defensible ships? I try to keep my people alive and the most effective way to do it I find is to engage the enemy from my ship

I've been using the Shadowbat but I have a few issues with it:
Glitch means I can bring 7 people max
Can't see underneath the wings from on top of them, meaning enemies can stand under and surprise me if they can fly (church exalt. Chrysalids or dogs running into my ship with their high TU)
Landing ramp let's me see in 3 direction, but the one we cant see is a bit of a blind corner that we need to step around in order to see around and can result in me being ambushed. Staircases on the ramp slow down our movement stepping in and out, and require people on the stairs to crouch in order to see through the door
Requires 4 people to effectively block the doorways (2 if only the stairs) and this leaves me terrified of AoE weapon reaction fire
Control room blocks vision from the wings meaning a flying enemy can hug the small blind spot on the back and ambush

But it has quite a few advantages too:
4 people can fire from the doorways without moving, 2 can fire from the elevators moving only up and down.
Elevators give a high up (level 2) vision of the battlefield from the very beginning and make it easier to connect with arcing explosives over a long distance without risk of return fire
Inner staircase is a strong chokepoint, allowing us to camp the elevator rooms, enemies coming up the stairs have to burn a lot of TUs, we will hear the doors opening if there aren't other sliding doors
Fairly spacious inside, I can keep people spread a bit if I need to
Can keep a couple of people in the control room and bring them down if an enemy comes inside, less risk (saved me from an exalt massacre when they came in though the elevators, these 2 survived)
Can stand on the wings and block the elevators, renders dogs, werewolves and lids ineffective
Well lit outside (night is more of an obstruction to me than the enemy)
Inside favors melee (usually my advantage)
I don't think vehicles can get up the stairs since they're pressed against the doors, means we can bait infantry inside while leaving tanks, reapers, cyberdiscs etc outside
Item pile is nowhere near the doors, not so likely to be vaporized by explosives
The control room as an obstacle means we can fire at enemies without reaction fire by launching grenades over the top of the control room

Does anyone have suggestions on other good defensive ships? What I really would like is:
1) Around 10 people
2) Bigger ship, means we can spread out more and camp positions effectively in the event that we need to lure enemies inside to melee them
3) More elevators
4) Better vision all around
5) High and broader rooftop with elevator access, means we can keep a mortar up there permanently and not have it fired upon except by flyers

I really doubt there's actually anything better than this, the shadowbat is a total deathtrap and if not for the glitch it would be extremely OP I think. Just wondering if anyone has any other good defensive suggestions. Or maybe pics of the ships on the battlescape?

Sorry but... the shadowbat have elevators? Where?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 12, 2017, 10:51:18 pm
That's a nice picture thank. It looks like a nice ship but the doors only open on one side, fast enemies could easily run around and attack

I take a very slow and methodical approach to gaming. I don't mind staying in the landing craft for most of the mission if it gives me better results. It does get boring eventually, and I end up leaving the landing craft but then get punished heavily and reminded of why I was playing it safe to begin with. No matter how careful you are being there is the risk of reaction fire if you miss or fail to kill, enemies shooting you as you try to approach into melee range, enemies positioning themselves so they can rush you next turn but if you go out to melee them then you won't have the TU to get back into cover, blind spots where enemeis could be but if you go to check then you'll burn too much TU and energy, enemies who are positioned looking out of windows but positioned farther back in the room so you can't see them at first but you can still take reaction fire if you move onto certain tiles.

I'll generally try to get armor that protects me against enemy attacks almost completely and then play it more loose to save time. If I'm reasonably sure I can't be hurt much (low grade lasers such as reticulans, guild security with AP shotgun ammo, the risk of taking shots to the back from a building I haven't fully explored) then I'll advance but play it cautiously, letting my energy recharge, staying in full cover when I can, maintaining a perimeter line and then sweeping the map so as to avoid attacks from behind etc. But still, there are missions with things like mid tier laser enemies, dogs, red dogs, zombies, any spartans, church exalts, ghouls with the chem shotguns, humanists on progroms with their plasma guns etc where I will play it extremely safe and usually attempt to kill everything in sight unless it is a unit type I am searching for and really want to have. I'll camp the landing craft and completely level the landscape

I know it's not a fun playstyle to watch and probably not how the game was intended to be played, but there's always a certain amount of luck involved, and a catastrophic failure can sink an entire campaign and all the hours sunk into it which is something I would very much like to avoid. I've lost my fair share of XCOM 2012 LW games that I've learned to play cautiously and leave very little to chance since it sucks to lose tens or even hundreds of hours of gametime and have to give up or start over

The shadowbat does indeed have elevators. I think they're technically ladder but they function like elevators with my character levitating up and down them. There is one on each wing and they allow a 360 degree vision range around each wing, only issue is it can be hard to see under the craft and enemies can approach unnoticed using buildings or tree for cover
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 12, 2017, 10:54:55 pm
AHH!

I need help. I just noticed a craft on a direct course to my south america base moving at 7500. Of the ships I have researched the only one that can move that fast is a boarding torpedo. I assume this is a crackdown ship but could it be it doesn't know about my base yet or is it guaranteed to be a base attack? What will happen if I dismantle the base for money before it hits, will it crash the game or something? Is it even guaranteed to be an attack or could it be searching?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Zharkov on August 12, 2017, 11:02:43 pm
AHH!

I need help. I just noticed a craft on a direct course to my south america base moving at 7500. Of the ships I have researched the only one that can move that fast is a boarding torpedo. I assume this is a crackdown ship but could it be it doesn't know about my base yet or is it guaranteed to be a base attack? What will happen if I dismantle the base for money before it hits, will it crash the game or something? Is it even guaranteed to be an attack or could it be searching?

Yes, it is a boarding torpedo, yes, it is coming for you, and yes, you can pack up and run. The game won`t crash.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 12, 2017, 11:07:40 pm
Thankyou. This is a shame, that base was fairly well developed but at least they didn't detect any bases the last 2 months. All my other bases will have 5 hideout shrouds by the end of the month so hopefully I'll lose no more than 2 bases a year after this
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: BBHood217 on August 13, 2017, 05:32:30 pm
The nice thing about OpenXcom is that it fixes those pesky vanilla Xcom bugs.  So if a UFO dead set on a base attack finds nothing upon reaching its destination, it'll simply disappear back into space instead of heading to another Xcom base and then just hanging there forever.

Oddly, the boarding torpedo has a battlescape map unlike the shippings that aren't meant to be fought on the battlescape like ratmen patrols and comm waves (those just get represented by a scout).  Does that mean that it's actually somehow possible to intercept and crash land a boarding torpedo?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Ethereal_Medic on August 13, 2017, 09:35:58 pm
None of the available interceptors are capable of reaching 7500 speed.
The sabre (ultimate fighter) should be able to reach 6500 speed using 2x thrusters instead of missles.
Put on the "base defense pants" the freaks are about to hit the bridge.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 13, 2017, 10:26:36 pm
Well I'm now unlocking a lot of tech that needs power armor parts and laser weapon parts, but I haven't been seeing anyone with laser weapons or powered armour. I do get shot at frequently with light cannons, rocket launchers, recoilless rifles (spartans, screw them!), las pistols but no proper military grade las weapons and rarely any power armour guys. Just how am I supposed to find them?

I'm still having problems with my bases. Lost 2 more but it seems like I'm making a bit more money than I'm losing and close to getting hyperwave decoders in every base. Just upgraded to guardian suits and the light cannons have totally replaced shotguns now. I've unlocked Nightmares and I'll start manufacturing them when I have the cash. However the best craft weapon I can produce is lascannon and medusa rockets which I lack the materials to manufacture and the best I can actually make/buy is 50mm cannon and seagull rockets. I'm afraid even if I scrape together the cash for 4 nightmares equipped with 50mm cannons and seagull missiles I won't be able to splash things like crackdown gunships or higher without some kind of tanking support I think
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: greattuna on August 13, 2017, 10:45:59 pm
To get military-grade equipment, assault military-grade ships, duh. Laser weapons are very commonplace at weaker military ships, mutant pogroms and space, and, of course, supply ships.

To get power armor parts: fight traders' guild. The better is (their) ship, the more dudes in power armor you'll get, and if lucky, you might even face a guildmaster! And again, you can raid supply ships, if you're willing to brave the nukes.

Also, power armor is totally unnecessary until the very endgame (I talk about Cydonia, unless you're insane enough to go with mere spacesuits instead. I wasn't). You can do just fine with guardian suits; they hold their own against most threats well.

You won't be able to shoot down all the enemy ships until the lategame, since them scurvy dogs sometimes will send a bomber, destroyer, cruiser or a freaking battleship to sniff you out. You can, however, shoot sentries and fighters and loot top-tier Space Rangers' laser pistols! They're pretty good.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 14, 2017, 12:30:19 am
Thanks! I've been trying guardian and it's pretty amazing, especially love the night and thermal vision. I would like power armor tho since I loved the 57mm rifle and it's a bit too heavy without power armor
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: greattuna on August 14, 2017, 01:03:23 am
I believe you meant 37mm Rifle, aka the weapon I never use precisely because it's too heavy, lol. I haven't even researched it, and I've already made my first plasma weapons! (as a side-note, plasma blunderbuss is great on space missions, it can one-shot zombies and did one-shot a chryssalid once. Use at close range only, otherwise it loses a lot of damage \ armor damage)

For the purpose of carrying stuff, you could substitute power armor with hover\dragonfly armor. They only have +15 capacity, and have mediocre armor values, buuuut they allow you to carry big guns and fly with them, so it's not all bad.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: SomeGuy on August 14, 2017, 01:34:22 am
When I attempted to use the plasma blunderbuss, it couldn't kill anything, or compared to the boom gun and slugthrowers anyway. Or it was against the wrong type of enemies, I don't remember. Though, I did like the 37mm rifle on my grav harness gal, was very useful since I got it early enough in game for it to be useful.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 14, 2017, 08:56:47 am
Thanks, I might get hover armor in the meantime then

Is there a way to force my people to panic? My new pilot has been stuck at 80 bravery for months and I want to level her up. I don't want her running around naked for missions tho she's too valuable to lose, could it be there is an item or armour that can force a panic in her?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KateMicucci on August 14, 2017, 09:02:42 am
Some voodoo items cost morale to use. You can also heal people.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Mechanique on August 14, 2017, 11:27:25 am
Thanks, I might get hover armor in the meantime then

Is there a way to force my people to panic? My new pilot has been stuck at 80 bravery for months and I want to level her up. I don't want her running around naked for missions tho she's too valuable to lose, could it be there is an item or armour that can force a panic in her?

Combat drugs, but make sure she is unarmed. Alternatively, put her on medic duty.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 14, 2017, 01:16:11 pm
We don't get hurt very often with our camping strats so I don't need a dedicated medic

I'll try combat drugs, thanks!

Does anyone know which ships specifically have the surgery units? I'm a ways off of splashing big ships, and I won't waste surgery units til I have my training base ready and have a garrison in each base but I'd like to know and can plan accordingly. I'll be getting powered armour before I start the training base since I want small garrison of no more than 10 men to be able to defend a base well, and that means I'll be waiting for that before I start garrisoning and defending bases. Hideout shrouds are enough for chemical production bases since they make more money than they cost before they get trashed, and they don't require anything that is currently in limited supply. The new hyperwave decoders tell me what mission each ship is on and what type it is so I can pick and choose better what to splash, I'm minimising crackdowns and gathering only the things I need to continue progression while my factories make up for the loss of income, I'm treating this like a government policy to get tough on crime, and switching from overt piracy to more subtle manufacturing and distribution of illegal goods to compensate

I just remembered that the barracudas have 4 LT platforms and now they have 4 50mm cannons each, together they can easily splash sentries, escorts and fighters but I'll buy a new reverend after I get power armour (gonna have to buy a lot of marsec bodyguards) and get forcefields for them as well, see if I can splash gunboats with 4 barracudas! Really need heavy power couplings to start getting better craft weapons XD
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 14, 2017, 05:27:13 pm
I finally research the Dr X Hideout but it hasn't appeared. How do I start the mission?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: SomeGuy on August 14, 2017, 07:24:23 pm
Usually new missions or anything that changes shipping appearances or other missions come into play next month. Like research "stop attacking civilians" or something and civ ships will still spawn for the remainder of the month and won't appear ever again. I think I had to wait around 3 months or so till it appeared for me.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 14, 2017, 11:52:54 pm
Thanks, I got the mission and completed it. Loot was nice but the database didnt unlock anything it seems, just says to be continued

Any advice for spotting cat girls? Does thermal vision work?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Ethereal_Medic on August 15, 2017, 12:56:51 am
Outfits with the ability SPOT or SENSE negate camo to the listed value.
Best bet would be the assassin suit but also a risky due to how far the cats can move and how squishy the armor is.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 15, 2017, 12:58:11 pm
Could I have a sense outfit, keep the senser inside the craft behind our line where the cat cant reach them, and then their sense ability will spot the cat girls? The downside here is that the people blocking the doors would be in danger though, can cat girls scratch through powered armor?

I'm having a traders guild month which means lots of powered armor. I've been leaving the progrom fighters alone just for a chance at more powered armor, and now we have our first sets of power armor we can carry 37mm rifles rather than recoilless rifles, meaning a higher fire rate and we don't vaporize the power armor. Graduation is complete so I'm now working towards harbinger and then I'll be upgrading my ships some more. I feel like my situation is very stable right now, we lose a base once every 3 months which is manageable and our progression is slow and steady. My main base surprisingly hasnt been attacked despite multiple crackdowns in the area (It's in the Carthage region and the ships don't seem to linger in that area)

With power armor and 37mm I think we can easily handle them even if they do attack and its a big faction now. Only real concern is if it's academy and they start with the mind screwery, perhaps I'll get VooDoo first, vet my current troops for high VooDoo skills, then send the low VooDoo people over to the training base to defend it and start building that up. Problem is I still don't have a huge income, enough that I don't need to do missions for money but I can't have another 10M in wages every month. The factories I have researched should allow us to vastly increase productivity though, and with well trained and equipped soldiers I can send squads of 10 dojo maxed soldiers in powered armor to defend factory bases which will vastly increase income and let me afford to train more troops and convert more of my cheap manufacturing bases into expensive and well defended factories. The surgery units I got from Dr X bases means I can even make them into medical supply factories for massive profit, and to steamroll towards a situation where I can afford potentially hundreds of troops in guardian or powered armor with 37mm rifles and rocket launchers, maybe pad them out a bit with tanks! Anyway that's the plan for now, very glad I kept pushing forward since just coming up with strategies and clawing my way forward inch by inch felt good

To research activities: commercial it says I need a "secure freight" I've seen ships on this mission but they didn't have a "secure freight" item on board. It seems a fighter appears first and if I don't shoot it down then a big freighter appears that I can't shoot down and doesn't land so I can't raid that one, am I supposed to get to the point where I can shoot one down and raid it to get a "secure freight" item that I can research?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Ethereal_Medic on August 15, 2017, 02:03:31 pm
"Secure Fright" is a mission type. You can get the research topic by researching a prisoner that gives this topic as a reward.
At one point you have to shot down a heavy freighter. It's damage output isn't that huge but you've to bring alot of firepower to the table to break the small shield and the huge hull.
If you manage to shoot it down, prepare for a huge squad of defenders to be dealt with.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: greattuna on August 15, 2017, 05:55:52 pm
"Secure Fright" is a mission type. You can get the research topic by researching a prisoner that gives this topic as a reward.

Yeah, good luck with that. None of the prisoners give that topic.

Re:cat girls: yes, they can scratch you through the armor, but only if you let them (cat paws have low damage, but damage armor). Yes, you can use sense through walls, but most outfits with sense have pretty small distance, so don't rely on it.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Solarius Scorch on August 15, 2017, 06:02:28 pm
Guys, supply ships don't auto-end mission... They just explode violently. Stop spreading bullshit info.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: ivandogovich on August 15, 2017, 06:27:08 pm
Ok, I'll chime in on Catgirls.   
First, they are invisible beyond 5 tiles.  This means that if you are close, you can spot them, and once you spot them they are pretty easy to deal with.  They have minimal armor  (5) and are pretty squishy (30 hp).   They do have decent TUs (90) and Decent reactions (80), so they can get close and slash you up.   Keeping good visibility (looking around as you move, and begin turns) can assist in avoiding ambushes.

Beyond their scratches, they may often be armed with Laspistols.  You may often get sniped from an invisible Catgirl on top of the smuggler ship, which can be annoying.  This is a great reason to set the top of that ship on fire (Firebombs, are great), and keep it blazing. Fire is a nice counter, as they drop morale and that can can disrupt and disarm them, and even drop them over time.  The Catgirls will also path off the edge of the ship and drop to the ground to get into melee, so that is something to watch out for (if you end the turn under a ship, glance back toward the edge at the beginning of your next turn).

So if you keep these things in mind, Catgirls, though a nuisance can be dealt with, without too much trouble.

Also: Bugbears throwing dynamite can be a nasty hazard on smuggler missions too. ;)
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: sinisteragent on August 15, 2017, 06:49:58 pm
Supporting what Ivan said: If in doubt, set everything on fire.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 15, 2017, 07:01:24 pm
Problem is, if there's a star god outcast then I might accidentally incinerate him.

Thanks for telling me about the supply ship, I've been skipping them because I cant rush through gauss weapons to take the ship in 20 turns but now I know it hasn't changed I'll go back to doing them and let the ship explode as before, I only want power armor and big laser/gauss guns for parts

Does anyone know which ships have small engines? I want to make shield generators but I already researched to stop targetting civvies and when I shoot down fighters their engines always explode.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: SomeGuy on August 15, 2017, 08:13:33 pm
Not exactly sure, but what about those Megapol ships? They seem small enough to use small engines, or they use something else, I don't know. Never really pay any attention to what individual ships give, I just loot everything.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: JustTheDude/CABSHEP on August 15, 2017, 08:28:44 pm
You all know device from original game called in XPiratez as "Ayephone"? This will give your gals ability to sense about 9 titles around despite armor for the cost of about 1/4 AP. It's great way to search for enemies in urban areas.

You said you have 37mm rifles. Power armor guy die or lay wounded after two-three front hits with that so I don't see any problem in taking down them. If you encountered deep ones you should have "doom pipes"(that weaponized instrument). It works like bow, but chem damage do great job in taking down armored enemies. Demon essence or early flask o' acid with skilled thrower can do something to armor also.

Logically, small ships have small engines and chance for them to blow up is random I think. Mayby it have something with overkill damage. I never saw shooted down excavator without working small engine.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 15, 2017, 10:59:25 pm
I can confirm megapol ships drop small engines. I hadn't seen any for a month. They're back now and I've never seen them crash with any visible damage so the engine is always salvageable

Just shot down a heavy freighter. I was surprised as it didnt appear on the shipping page or the wiki and was on a secure freighter mission. Anyway I thought it might have similiar damage to a normal freighter and I just finished making 2 small shield generators so I went for it and it went down. Wish me luck!
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 16, 2017, 12:28:42 am
OMG what a massacre! So many dead people, they were piling up! Got tons of tech, finished off my gauss tier and even got some nice plasma and a rail rifle tech. More power armor parts, more big lasers and gauss for heavy power cables, and the documentation and flight plan, this is exactly what I needed :D
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 16, 2017, 01:51:55 am
Looking at the wiki the interceptors progression seems odd. You start off with the hunter-killer. 2MS and 2LT, very squishy

Next you have the Barracuda and the Nightmare. Nightmare is a clear upgrade on the hunter-killer, Barracuda loses the 2MS slots but gains 2 LT slots, has a bit less speed and toughness and comes at a time when good missiles are hard to get, meaning you can go with the tough, fast and powerful nightmare or the more easily equipped and cheaper ammo barracuda

Then next you have the Sabre which is like the nightmare, except it's a little bit faster, much squishier and has a tiny shield upgrade. What's the point of this thing? Seems like the Nightmare is the best ship with the Barracuda doing well until better missiles are available and potentially doing much higher damage by the time it runs out of ammo and can equip a light shield generator or a tracker without losing half it's DPS. There's a clear balance between the Nightmare and Barracuda, but the Sabre just seems to be bad by comparison and so much harder to get
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Ethereal_Medic on August 16, 2017, 01:56:17 am
A swarm of sabre destroys everything that annoys you.
The sabre's speed and the inbuild shield is a great addition to have, means you can have the full arsenal of the nightmare plus 2 light weapons and 2 rockets.
The sabre is meant to be the ultimate fighter for reasons.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Marza on August 16, 2017, 04:16:23 am
400% repair speed.

Ask yourself how long it usually takes for a badly damaged craft without such a bonus (like a nightmare) to be fully repaired. Then ask yourself what the typical time delay is for a new wave of shipping to appear on the geoscape. Also keep in mind that during repairs, craft can never be refuelled and rearmed until repairs are complete.

Whilst nightmares are good and can carry the same weapons as sabres, you should find sabres will have far, far, far more utility and strategic use than other interceptors.

Sabres also only need one pilot, making it a bit easier to field a squadron of sabres with 90+ bravery. A nice little feature, but its the ability to
reliably respond to any emergency interception that makes sabres the ultimate fighter.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 16, 2017, 09:56:14 am
So the purpose of sabres is if you want to take down every single shipping? Got it, thanks! Still, the massive loss in toughness seems like a big deal since they'll have to withdraw from the fight so quickly, but I guess if the objective is to clear the skies rather than prioritise targets then it's the best one

I thought of a new way to train bravery. If I equip someone with powers of seduction I can train bravery without losing health (combat drugs). To avoid danger, I'll KO an enemy, drag them into the rape bus, and then wake them up and use powers of seduction on them from a spot where my person can't be shot at. I'd like to get high bravery for my pilots, but I'm also running a VooDoo school and I want to send my top VooDoo power people to capture a reticulan elder. Those missions are a hell of psionic attacks. I've managed to capture most reticulans, even a mechtoid by camping inside the shadowbat and KOing them when they come inside, I keep a known liability (Private Berry) who I know can be easily mind controlled and keep her unarmed in a room where the doors are blocked, that way when the enemy opens a door and sees us and the mind attacks start they target the liability who cant hurt us or escape the room, then I'm free to KO whoever came inside and flee the same turn. I'm very unlikely to capture an elder using this method tho so I really need high psi, psi skill and bravery people to pull this off I think

I'll see how it goes. Are there any other VooDoo abilities that can hit us with morale loss? It would be even more convenient to have something like an ability that transfers morale from one soldier to another since then I don't even need to mess around abducting someone for... training. Also more ethical. Are there any other noteworthy VooDoo abilities anyone can recommend to me?

I'm on a terror mission right now and trying to capture a live cyberdisc, but the ones I hit with a handle don't go down (I assume they have high concussion resistance) and the ones I hit with a tesla coil explode. How do I capture one? I already wrecked one without it exploding so I will have a cyberdisc wreck but I'd like an intact one
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 16, 2017, 01:01:36 pm
Well I resorted to bashing the last one for 6 turns with handles with all 6 of my people. Eventually everyone was badly injured and we just had to zap it with the tesla coil which killed it, so no capture D:
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 16, 2017, 08:24:09 pm
I wonder if the 37mm rifle is the best gun in the game. It does higher damage than a sniper gauss with max accuracy, most enemeis dont resist pierce that much and it can even bleed a lobsterman with a front shot. Plasma seems nice too but some of the dangerous enemies like church and star gods resist it, but it seems there is no defense against the awesome power of this weapon. TU cost is low enough to run a few squares, fire and then run back again, and it has a fairly accurate and cheap snapshot. It's heavy as hell so it prohibits use of anything else, but it's power is so high that you really don't need anything else
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: SomeGuy on August 16, 2017, 08:37:13 pm
Weight is the only issue for it. Making most gals go over their strength value unless they have certain armour on or build some of those items that increase carry weight (forgot the name). Useful, but annoying to equip properly without sacrificing something. But I find the gauss muskets pretty effective, low weight, low TU cost and pretty accurate with high damage. But of course you only unlock those much later in the game.

But inbetween the 37mm and gauss, I think I mainly used slugthrowers for more missions. Also high damage, OK range and low TU cost.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 16, 2017, 10:10:47 pm
They're alright, and I have gauss muskets too, but 37mm gets 120 piercing damage, incredible accuracy and can fire twice with snapshots. On the missions I'm doing we take a lot of reaction fire when we shoot so we exclusively wear power armor anyway or we would be dead from all the laser, gauss and plasma fire we take. Since shots can roll very low on damage that means that outside guns that hit multiple time in one shot like shotguns or that can fire multiple times in an action like heavy laser then you are at the mercy of the RNG. I think the only alternative is with camo and stealth, but there are plenty of enemies who see through camo, robots that can see through stealth, and neither is much good when you go indoors and an enemy can potentially come round the corner on their turn and shoot you. Aye phone is ok but short range so when you move up you might put yourself in sprinting range of something. In any case I haven't had any deaths in a very long time and my people are maxed in TU, Str, energy and aim with high reactions and melee so I don't wanna lose them, and I could never have got them this far without power armor I think while still doing such hard missions. Any disadvantages of power armor are pretty much offset by the high stats of my long surviving soldiers

Turns out I didnt need a cyberdisk capture
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Marza on August 16, 2017, 10:44:38 pm
Whilst it is possible to nonlethally stun a cyberdisk, I don't think there's a way to stop it from exploding immediately after.

I haven't played with all the damage types and weapons available in the game, so I don't know for sure. What I do know is that a recipe to disassemble live cyberdisks exists in the game, so maybe there is a way to capture them.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 16, 2017, 11:00:25 pm
Thanks. I was trying to get some research but then it turned out I didn't need it

Does anyone know where I can find a gatling lascannon? I've taken down a lot of big ships but no one seems to use them
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: ohartenstein23 on August 16, 2017, 11:24:00 pm
It is possible to capture a cyberdisc, but it's more of a quirk of the engine than an intended feature; the code itself says if a cyberdisc gets knocked unconscious, set its HP to 0 without exploding it.  However, these lines are not run if you manage some stun damage on the disc without knocking it unconscious, then lower its HP below stun by a damage type that prevents the death explosion.

Gatling lascannons? Spend a little more time checking the forum (https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,5644.0.html).
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Serpentium on August 16, 2017, 11:32:42 pm
Whilst it is possible to nonlethally stun a cyberdisk, I don't think there's a way to stop it from exploding immediately after.

I haven't played with all the damage types and weapons available in the game, so I don't know for sure. What I do know is that a recipe to disassemble live cyberdisks exists in the game, so maybe there is a way to capture them.

I've gone through with testing damage types against them and... after a few blew up on my face, I found that cutting damage from melee weapons keeps them from exploding. It's real risky, what with them flying most of the time and their reaction fire. Your best bet for killing one without having it blow up (at least in early to mid game) is a Gal with some form of flying armor and a good melee weapon with cutting damage. If you want to be clever, you can have some disposable unit take the reaction fire before you fly in for the stabbing.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: ohartenstein23 on August 16, 2017, 11:36:41 pm
The self-destruct doesn't go off when the disc is destroyed by concussive, incediary, cutting, or daze damage (these are the vanilla damage types that don't set off the self destruct), or anything Dioxine has marked to specifically disable it.  Spamming molotovs is surprisingly effective.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: khade on August 16, 2017, 11:46:22 pm
If you're getting lots of reaction fire, I'm guessing that your Gals reactions aren't maxed.

Shooting things down is supposed to raise bravery, though I don't know the formula.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 17, 2017, 12:14:55 am
They're reaction maxed mostly, but the AI usually half moves so when I shoot with 37mm rifle, uses most of TU, and especially if we have opened a door, gone up the ladders to fire, or left the front of the craft to walk around the side and fire, that usually results in reaction fire unless the target has moved or if we get a decent damage roll and instakill

Sorry I should've checked the forum first, thanks for the link!

I found a couple of easy ways to get the cyberdisk in melee range without flying armour when I was trying to KO one

Kill everything on the map and deliberately leave a cyberdisk alive, bug hunt mode activates and allows you to track it and then:

1) Camp inside a building or the landing craft with doors shut and keep checking the map til it's right outside the door, then run out and melee
2) Get inside the enemy craft and wait for it to come in, then jump out and chop it to pieces

I remember getting a wreck with the shoulder cannon in the previous version, but melee should be easy enough if you bait it in. Harbinger armour is strong enough to take in the region of 10 hits from it if you are ok with the damage it rolls, we were surrounding it for like 10 turns getting shot and bashing it with handles before I decided to kill it
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Marza on August 17, 2017, 01:05:15 am
The self-destruct doesn't go off when the disc is destroyed by concussive, incediary, cutting, or daze damage ...

I could have sworn that daze damage triggered the self destruct, or have I gone mad?

EDIT - Nevermind, I've re read the past few posts. Neat quirk with the engine.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: khade on August 17, 2017, 02:34:12 am
Doesn't have to be melee, just has to be of the right damage type.  And there are ranged cutting weapons  :)
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Serpentium on August 17, 2017, 05:48:13 am
Aye, I never thought of using Molotov for them early in the game. It makes sense too, since you can directly hit the cyberdisk, fall back, rinse and repeat. Whenever I manage to get the Death Realms research, I just went with using the arena fireball launchers. I had forgotten all about the humble molotov that you could use real early in the game!  :P
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 17, 2017, 01:18:49 pm
What's the best source of sense in the game?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: JustTheDude/CABSHEP on August 17, 2017, 04:23:42 pm
You mean armor that give gals sense? I guess assasin armor give 10 titles sense but I'm not sure. Ayephone give you 9 titles sense but at cost of some AP.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 17, 2017, 06:22:32 pm
Thanks, I'll see about assassin armour. I would've thought there was a voodoo that gave a ton of sense
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Solarius Scorch on August 17, 2017, 06:50:19 pm
Well, Fairy armour probably has the strongest Sense.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: ohartenstein23 on August 17, 2017, 06:51:53 pm
Assassin doesn't give sense, it gives spot to negate some camouflage/invisibility.  Best source of sense is the magical girl/fairy outfit at 12 tiles, which comes through voodoo: excess, next best is the sorceress outfit at 7 tiles from the grey codex.  Otherwise Novice, Vampy, and Ghost give you 3 tiles.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Ethereal_Medic on August 17, 2017, 07:46:47 pm
Considering all those squishy spot/sense outfits the best to deal with them and everything extremely camo'ed is artillery support.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: wolfreal on August 17, 2017, 08:06:21 pm
Considering all those squishy spot/sense outfits the best to deal with them and everything extremely camo'ed is artillery support.

Nuke then all  ;D
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 17, 2017, 08:54:05 pm
I can confirm the fairy magical girl outfit has 12 sense, just got it!

My plan was to go using the shadowbat and 7 hands. 2 hands will stand at each of the elevators, 4 hands stand at the doorways, the magical girl patrols the ship and will shoot through the walls when I get an ability that can go through the walls. It will further enhance the amazing power of this mobile fortress, and ensure the safety of my magical girl support hand!

By the way, be careful about putting people in the control room, flying enemies can see inside and shoot hands who are in there. This ship should be called the Shadow Beta
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Ethereal_Medic on August 17, 2017, 08:54:56 pm
Yes the aye phone is a possible solution to pinpoint the tile a foe is standing on. What can't be seen by any means is quickly dealt with by using mortars and explosives.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 17, 2017, 09:08:30 pm
I wonder if the fairy outfit is good for capturing star gods. It doesn't have any camo but it has sense and high special resistance, would it make my people immune to mind control and ghost beam? Bio suit only has 50% special resistance and has some armor and plasma resistance and from what I remember the star gods sometimes carry plasma guns. I could go with a mix of magical girls and bio suits, use the magical girls sense and flying to spot and capture the star gods while the bio suits tank the enemy fire, deal with grounded star gods or shoot the flying ones with tranquilizer or tesla coils
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KateMicucci on August 17, 2017, 09:34:46 pm
I wish that Ayephones would give Sense when held in the hands, if that was possible. Even in the original x-com the implementation of motion sensors always felt clunky.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: greattuna on August 17, 2017, 10:25:49 pm
Wait wait wait, hold on.

Shadowbats are gold\gray codex.
Fairies are gold\green codex.
Bio suits are green\red codex.

It doesn't add up, you aren't supposed to use all three items together at the given playthrough.

Special resistance doesn't make you resistant to mind control, psi strength + psi skill + psi defense, if any + high bravery does. And since fairy has whopping +30 to psi strength, she's pretty safe. Though she will be vulnerable to ghost beams, plasma weapons and sectopods. Anything is vulnerable to sectopods, so be careful around them.

Don't rely on their sense either, it's useful to see inside the ship without facing reaction fire, but it's only 12 tiles, not good in open space.

What I would recommend is using your tanky gals to search\bait star gods out, and them fire at them with lucky stars. I don't know if they're immune to the mind damage, but if they aren't, they will get knocked out.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: JustTheDude/CABSHEP on August 17, 2017, 11:14:13 pm
I don't feel that way about "Ayephone" in vanilla game. Full time sense that early in game would be OP at cost of one hand that could drop it for only 2 AP.
It's great device when used in 2-3 gals/soldiers squad becouse 9 titles in urban areas are a lot and even alien ship in open field is a mystery. If somebody played TFTD then he should think about it as a blessing on ship missions. So many rooms and so many lobstermans.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 18, 2017, 12:41:57 am
I chose the gold codex. According to my tech finder the bio suit should be possible to research

I wasn't planning on doing any big star god vessels, just some small ones to try and capture a few at a time. I don't think messengers get anything other than star gods in them but there's like 10 or something. My plan was to land and make an immediate rush to the ship. Some star gods would get out but wouldnt get far from the entrance and would shoot at us, revealing their rough locations for us. I'd then send the magical girls over to reveal them, then take them down. I'd make sure at the end of my turn the bio suits are in front of the magical girls to tank the enemy turn. The magical girls would sense the star gods through the UFO and make it easier to find them and avoid being surprised.

If I can't get bio suits I need to rethink this. What's the best thing for psi defense? Worst case I might have to go as all fairies and camp inside the shadowbat, let them come to me, then drag them inside and abort the mission to escape after 10-20 turns so they don't die of system shock, and just take whatever captives entered the trap

Thinking about it though I might be better making a second troop carrier specifically for this mission type and sending in some hover tanks with some magical girls. Use the hover tanks to spot the star gods and use the magical girls to make the captures. If I do the abduction ship method first, then after I have researched the most common star gods I can murder those with my tanks and then we only need to worry about the rare star gods which my magical girls can take down. I'd still probably need to do a big star god ship eventually though to get a coordinator capture, maybe even the second higher ranking star god if I can't find those on smaller ships as well, but I can basically waste anything else. Maybe see if I can find an outfit that has high voodoo defense and reaction bonus so I can arm those ones with gauss and plasma rifles to kill the star gods minion, sectopod etc without taking lethal reaction fire
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: greattuna on August 18, 2017, 01:55:57 am
Are you quite sure you're reading it right? You need voodoo: communion to get bio suits, and you need red\green codex to get voodoo: communion.

Even with small ships like messenger, large part of the crew will be star god guardians, who trade psi and invisibility for guns. Also may be bolstered by their terror units: waspites, rockys and cyclopes.

Anything with decent boni to psi strength \ psi defense is good for protection against psi attacks, duh. Just skim the bootypedia, it's all listed. From top of my head, you could use: bio suits, annihilators, bikinis, xeno armor, and any voodoo-related outfit.

gauss and plasma rifles to kill the star gods minion, sectopod etc without taking lethal reaction fire

Good luck trying to kill sectopods with that lol. They'll one-shot you.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: legionof1 on August 18, 2017, 03:41:46 am
There is a fair amount of sense on the voodoo outfits but those tend to be specialty outfits like the fairy. The assassin outfit's SPOT on the other hand is a stronger value when it comes finding hidden stuff but will not bypass walls like sense will. The assassin ends up being cheaper to make with a higher range in most cases, and is therefore usually the better outfit for general use.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: SomeGuy on August 18, 2017, 11:51:14 am
With version 0.99G6 that's available on the discord, each codex now gives 3 of the voodoo schools.
Gold: Communion, Illusion, Excess.
Green: Communion, Excess, Destruction.
Red: Communion, Illusion, Destruction.
Grey: Illusion, Excess, Destruction.
But the ships are still the same. So you can have bio suit + fairy now. Among other powerful combinations.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 18, 2017, 12:41:59 pm
Ah that's good then. But I had no idea that Annihilator had VooDoo defense, it seems rather op lol.

I haven't seen any reticulans or mercenaries in years, did they stop appearing? I need a merc engineer but they didnt appear in the month of the mercenaries last year so I couldn't get any, and although I had a couple of reticulan months last year we didnt have the psi resistance we needed at the time. Now I have 80+ bravery, 50+ psi strength and 40 voodoo skill on my A team I want a ret elder but I never see them anymore D:
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: SomeGuy on August 18, 2017, 01:04:54 pm
They'll probably appear some time in the future. In my 3 years in-game still haven't fought any Smugglers and only a few Reticulans in early-sih game, none since. Good thing only Mercs appeared once I already had some decent laser weapons but haven't seen any since. Wish you could do something to anger or fool certain factions and make them do something, like something along the lines of spreading false information about underground minerals which would make more excavators spawn and so on. But not like I'd know if something like that would be possible.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 18, 2017, 01:15:08 pm
Maybe make it so a single ship from that faction spawns on some kind of public relations mission, shooting it down causes a massive backlash from the faction that owned it the next month. Since shooting down normal ships can already causes crackdowns I think perhaps this might be possible?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Solarius Scorch on August 18, 2017, 02:20:50 pm
Not really; crackdowns can't be controlled like this.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 18, 2017, 10:49:31 pm
Ah, russian files quest is evil! Lost one of my A team, and the others were badly wounded. Had to kill like 10 tanks. Hope these files were worth it T_T

Well I got my reticulan elder. Now I'm just waiting for spartans. I've got my training base complete and pumping out 50+ power, 60+ reactions and well trained soldiers. Now that I can defend bases properly I am switching my cheap and disposable workshop bases into factory bases with surgeries (the magical girl ships and some high level ships like shrine I raided had surgery units in). With this I can afford my big army and buy my VIPs, so I just need a couple of spartan engineers, and then I'll use the annihilator armor to capture my star gods to finish off my plasma tech. Not sure if I should bother though since the 37mm rifle seems to hit harder than even heavy plasma, and there are fewer enemies with pierce resistance. I'll still need the star god cydonia codes but I'll probably get them from a smuggler star god. Then I'll probably just be training my full A team and building a star ship
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: greattuna on August 18, 2017, 11:13:21 pm
With version 0.99G6 that's available on the discord, each codex now gives 3 of the voodoo schools.

Yep, you're right. I stand corrected.

Ah, russian files quest is evil! Lost one of my A team, and the others were badly wounded. Had to kill like 10 tanks. Hope these files were worth it T_T

Yes, the mission is one of the more difficult, and it unlocks access to upgraded lasers which do not require ammunition.

Not sure if I should bother though since the 37mm rifle seems to hit harder than even heavy plasma, and there are fewer enemies with pierce resistance.
37mm rifle has 100 damage, heavy plasma has 115, autofire, ammo can be looted, and the gun itself is very light compared to 37mm rifle. Also, mercenaries, the second-worst faction to face against, are resistant to piercing damage.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 19, 2017, 05:09:10 pm
Yeah, mercs are really annoying like that, they also have the stats to give their gauss rifles some high damage. 37mm rifle can still kill them tho but it typically takes about 3-4 shots although 1-2 shots gets them bleeding and I usually ignore the bleeders to avoid taking more reaction fire. Problem is the academy and the star gods are plasma resistant, as are a lot of terror units but I never see anything that's massively resistant to piercing that also has very high armor so there's nothing my 37mm rifles can't take down. Additionally they have a decent clip size, at 120 aim they are very accurate within 15 squares for snapshot 2 shots, and massively accurate with aimed shot across the entire map with a TU cost that let's me walk a couple of squares, fire and walk back again while wearing harbinger armor

IMO the faction difficulty is:
1) Star Gods - total psi screw, invisibility, flying, sectopods, super tanky things they bring with them
2) Church - a close second because of chrysalids, and also they get some psi from reverends/cardinal which can be hard to track down, and flying church exalts which can come rushing up on your flank and chop you to pieces. Really it's the chrysalids/psi combo that makes them hell, sometimes the chrysalids derp out but when they're taking it seriously they're just awful, but I'd imagine this wouldn't be so bad with psi resistant, flying annihilator armor
3) Academy - Because these guys get psi too. Now I'm using 50 voodoo power people it's not too terrible, and at least they go for psi panic over mind control but the panic has led to some of my people running out into the open and dying quite a few times in situations we otherwise had well under control. The cyberdisks were terrifying pre-power armor but they barely damage harbinger, even if they're tanky to piercing damage. They don't have any units that can one shot us, except maybe the exalts and only then if they're very lucky and don't spend too much TU reaching us
4) Mercenaries - No psi, no particularly terrifying terror units. Their gauss hurt like hell and with their reactions they cause consistent wounds, some can also fly into my ship elevators as well so I have to be careful about keeping track of them. But in the end they're just tanky units with high reactions, half of them fly and they do consistent moderate damage, inflicting wound recovery time, but have no instant death attacks
5) Traders - Their tanks can one shot my harbinger users rarely and consistently inflict damage with retal fire, but they aren't all that accurate and this is really the only dangerous thing that they have. No psi, no chrysalids, low damage with their gauss/plasma rifles that rarely gets through armor.

Aside from the consistent low level damage they cause which inflicts wound recovery time I think mercenaries are one of the safest factions to fight since they don't have any source of instant death or mind screw that the other factions have, the difficulty for me comes from psi > units that can one shot me > units that are generally well armoured and can hurt us

Does anyone know what the formula is for crackdowns. I've been dealing with like 20 crackdown missions searching for me a month and I've resorted to only shooting down the crackdown ships now. It's like the crackdowns are spawning more crackdowns

Is there a better weapon than the tech blade for melee?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: legionof1 on August 19, 2017, 08:33:11 pm
Sounds like the infinite crackdown bug is back. 20 a month is well outside anything i've experienced even in my one campaign that ran 7 years(bad tech RNG).

Quite a few melee items better then the tech blade. Axes variants mostly for higher damage. Hellblade is probably the pinnacle of potential melee damage. That said past about 40 base damage the stat scaling is generally sufficient to handle just about anything. Doing 60-80 per 10-20 TU(or more) is immensely efficient.   
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: greattuna on August 19, 2017, 08:51:53 pm
Just saying: electro-sword is a direct upgrade to tech blade, better damage, better scaling, faster, no +xx% armor, bonus shock damage...

You can praise that rifle as much as you won't, but I won't use something that requires me to wear power armor if I want to also carry sidehandle\grenades\medikit\etc  :P. Besides, heavy plasma is superior in many ways to the 37mm rifle, and with the sheer raw damage resists are little problem.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 19, 2017, 10:33:24 pm
Isn't that like saying: "This gun would be great, but it's a shame I have to open my eyes to use it"

Why wouldn't you be using power armor? :P
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Zharkov on August 19, 2017, 11:08:32 pm

Why wouldn't you be using power armor? :P

There are ppl who think the TU malus isn't worth it.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 20, 2017, 12:01:02 am
You get a TU malus anyway when an enemy unit sees the left buttcheek of your person reflected off the tears of a dying sparrow through a window and reaction shots them, leaving you with a 80 TU person fresh out of the training base XD

Annihilator suit gives a TU bonus anyway doesnt it?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Zharkov on August 20, 2017, 12:33:50 am
Annihilator suit gives a TU bonus anyway doesnt it?

Yeah, and Superhero, too.

Another way to Counter reaction fire related demise would be armor that enhances reactions - like again annihilator, but aslo chromeback. Chromeback is much easier to get.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: greattuna on August 20, 2017, 12:56:05 am
Why wouldn't you be using power armor? :P

Power armor is expensive, uses rare parts, tanks TUs and energy recovery, thus hampering my attempts to use melee. Sure it's good for those who don't move around much, but I, sadly, do move around much and I'm just about fed up of my gals running out of energy.

Annihilator suit doesn't give a TU bonus, it just confers no penalty. Also, it's an end-game armor.

You get a TU malus anyway when an enemy unit sees the left buttcheek of your person reflected off the tears of a dying sparrow through a window and reaction shots them, leaving you with a 80 TU person fresh out of the training base XD

What. Just because I don't like power armor, doesn't mean I'm sending my soldiers in combat naked. They just use lighter armors, like guardian, or soon-to-be-manufactured assault armor. It's pretty fast with +5 TU and +20 reactions, and decently armored too. I also use (gasp) outfits with 20 armor, though with these I'm extra careful.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 20, 2017, 01:08:47 am
I love that admiral outfit, it's so damn cool lol

I really need gems for a magical girl outfit but as far as I know the only source is from underwater chests. I've done like 10 so far and all I get is garbage, no treasure chests :/
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Ethereal_Medic on August 20, 2017, 09:27:01 pm
Mansion Missions give you treasure chest too.
Depending on difficult setting alot of dudes too punch through with infiltration-only gear.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KateMicucci on August 20, 2017, 11:28:28 pm
I find gems on organ grinder.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 20, 2017, 11:36:54 pm
Hmmm. I really don't want to risk the lives of my elites though, especially since I read a thread that there was like 100 enemies on one of those missions.

I just lost one of my people taking a merc engineer, but if I can just get 1 more than all I'll need is the smuggler star god and I'll have everything I need for the final mission. I only really needed the magical girl to help me with the mercenaries since they can fly and get into my craft from multiple directions but I'll just push on and get 1 more engineer I think without it, especially since if I pass up the chance now to get a magical girl outfit it'll be another 2 years before I see any more mercenaries
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KateMicucci on August 21, 2017, 06:26:37 am
Organ grinder is not difficult if you wear smokey or mesh suits and bring fire weapons. If you're running around with 37mm and everyone in power armor already it should be very easy.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: tylor on August 21, 2017, 09:36:12 am
TU malus is not that detrimental if you use firearms.
Though, yeah, power armor usage is pretty limited.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 21, 2017, 01:03:53 pm
Alright I'll do organ grinders. Ghouls can't fly so I can just camp inside the landing craft and shoot them with snapshots as they come through the doors. That way the smoke can't reach me either. I tried to do a couple before but they went quite badly:

1) Turned out a lot like aliens. We crept forward through the smoke not seeing much, just 1 or 2 weird red dog things. The smoke thickened and it got harder to see, then suddenly some ghouls ambushed us and someone got wounded and another person panicked. We took a turn to patch up the wounded person and then another ghoul came and wounded the panicked person, so we patched them up and started carrying them back to the ship. On the way a red dog came running through the mist and annihilated one of us. The carriers shot at the dog on my turn and took it down but I was concerned there might be more and sent my 2 people who weren't carrying and had all their TUs running back to the ship. Well, they got there but a dog came in and non-fatally mangled one of them.

This was the pachyderm so I had the other person go up the lift after stabilising the mangled person, into the cockpit and stand on the lift to keep out the doge. That bought a turn for the 2 other people to get back with 2 more red dogs on their heels and we managed to escape with 1 dead person left behind and 3 people with 40 days in the sickbay

2) Decided to camp the pachyderm. Doges ran in and survived the reaction fire, some people got mangled to death and I retreated

But we were using heavy tac armour and heavy shotguns back then, and now I know the red doges are strong armor in front, but the shadowbat is very good for defense since the entrance is a kill zone, we have good reactions, good aim, we'll be firing close but with 5 blocks, 2 of which are stairs before they reach us and this is after they open the doors and move however far from outside, it should work out quite well I think. Are the gems guaranteed?

We finally have the electro swords. Is this the best melee weapon for us?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 21, 2017, 04:24:42 pm
Finally got my 2 mercs engineers, cost me 3 of my top soldiers though, good thing I have 33 more, just need to patch up those holes in my roster.

Tesla coil seemed pretty useless. Didn't try the electro sword but the heavy plasma and microwave cooker worked very well. I also hadn't realised the auto fire of the heavy plasma would be so accurate in the hands of a 120 aim (+10 from the armour to 130) soldier. A captain rushed us and iced 2 of my soldiers in 1 hit each with these claw things, I read the stats on them and they don't seem that strong but I'll have to make some and give them a try, test them alongside the electro swords and see which gives the best results because 90+ hp damage per strike against harbinger front and then side armor is incredible!

Well all I need now is either a full deck of star gods or a smuggler star god and I'll have all the tech I need to reach the final mission, the rest is just manufacturing weapons of which I intend to definetly make more heavy plasma since they performed so well and only vaporized a couple of mercs
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: wolfreal on August 21, 2017, 04:33:08 pm
How many hours are you playing daily? I have from January with the same campaign and I´m just in year two!.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KateMicucci on August 21, 2017, 09:30:00 pm
Quote
Tesla coil seemed pretty useless.
I got one very early, before I had autoax, and used it as a chainsaw replacement, but with everybody have electric resist, it's hard to think of a role for it that a gun or autoax wouldn't do better.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 21, 2017, 10:22:23 pm
Well, seems I need 324 synthmuscle meshes to make 36 annihilator armour suits. This could take a while XD

Where can I find a plasma spitter?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: legionof1 on August 22, 2017, 12:16:31 am
Those "claw things" while lowish in base damage scale well and have a rather high armor pen. In the hands of a merc officer they do 95.5 damage after scaling. add in 150% max roll and you get 143.25 max damage.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 22, 2017, 12:22:34 am
oh wow, isn't that stronger than the electro sword then?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: greattuna on August 22, 2017, 12:32:57 am
It's a dagger, a top-tier one, but still. Of course it would be weaker than a sword. On a capped gal (80 STR, 140 MEL) sword will have on average 136 damage, while mono-claws (these claw things) only have 91 damage, but they also ignore some armor and are faster to attack, as well as fitting on a quick draw slot.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 22, 2017, 06:22:43 pm
That's good thanks! I'll be switching to claws since the annihilator armor lacks a backpack

I just attempted some star god captures. The handles didnt work we couldnt even hit them, and then tesla coil had a 50% kill rate. How does the tranquilizer harpoon and the small bomb launcher match up to them? Is there anything I can be using that takes them down pretty fast with a low kill rate?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: SomeGuy on August 22, 2017, 10:01:07 pm
I just use the small bomb launcher, but if one of me gals gets close enough and I prayed to RNGeesus earlier, cattle prod 'em. Works . . .sometimes.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 22, 2017, 10:13:44 pm
I had like 3 of my people stood behind 3 star gods bashing at them. We used annihilator armor and sprinted and they all had max TU so we got a ton of swings but not even one of them hit :/
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 22, 2017, 11:10:29 pm
Well I've been gambling with the tesla coil and it works so far. So foes the stun bomb but they wake up too fast and the tesla coils wounds them enough to keep them out, then I just grab them and run from the fight. I've got a novice, a guardian and an operative now, all I need is a coordinator. Where do coordinators appear? Is it only the silver towers or are they in other ships as well?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: SomeGuy on August 22, 2017, 11:14:57 pm
Probably appear during pogroms. Silver towers look like a pain to shoot down, but haven't even seen any of them even spawn.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 22, 2017, 11:30:08 pm
I saw them in year 1 but never since, but now star gods are appearing a lot I might see one. Statistically it doesnt seem much worse than a destroyer. It's shots are very accurate but it's also a bit squishier.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: ohartenstein23 on August 22, 2017, 11:32:11 pm
I saw them in year 1 but never since, but now star gods are appearing a lot I might see one. Statistically it doesnt seem much worse than a destroyer. It's shots are very accurate but it's also a bit squishier.

Silver towers - "squishier".  Thanks for the laugh!
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 23, 2017, 01:18:02 am
Didnt see the shields lol

Well there wasnt a coordinator on a destroyer but there was like 10 sectopods. Lost a soldier there sadly but got more captives and loot, can at least make my own heavy plasma ammo now

I think I'll just keep waiting for smugglers til I get lucky, what's the appearance rate for public enemies?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: BBHood217 on August 23, 2017, 03:21:07 am
Just wanna chime in to a couple of old questions.

To research activities: commercial it says I need a "secure freight" I've seen ships on this mission but they didn't have a "secure freight" item on board. It seems a fighter appears first and if I don't shoot it down then a big freighter appears that I can't shoot down and doesn't land so I can't raid that one, am I supposed to get to the point where I can shoot one down and raid it to get a "secure freight" item that I can research?

That's pretty much it.  The only way to research Secure Freight is to shoot down and raid a heavy freighter; the guild rep there carries an item that lets you research the Secure Freight topic, so be careful not to blow her up.

I'm on a terror mission right now and trying to capture a live cyberdisc, but the ones I hit with a handle don't go down (I assume they have high concussion resistance) and the ones I hit with a tesla coil explode. How do I capture one? I already wrecked one without it exploding so I will have a cyberdisc wreck but I'd like an intact one

You actually can't capture a cyberdisc, the live disassembly is there just in case you somehow do capture one which should normally be impossible.  I know this because I also asked how to capture a live cyberdisc and that's the answer that I got.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 23, 2017, 11:36:37 am
Ok, hmm. Having no luck finding a public enemy. I'm thinking of building a big fleet of interceptors to drop a star god battleship or silver towers. Any suggestions as to what craft and weapons woudl be best?

Has anyone ever done this or do they always take down public enemies instead?

Do coordinators only appear in silver towers?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: legionof1 on August 23, 2017, 05:28:57 pm
Stargods are unfortunately exceptionally resistant to daze type damage(50% or better). Most weapons will bounce off the combination of resist and moderate armor. Ironically the least lethal way to capture stargods is voodoo skills/weapons. While they are very resistant to such things, most voodoo largely ignores/strips armor and are very powerful.

Small launchers are about a 30% chance to do any damage. Most voodoo by comparison will average 10-20.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 23, 2017, 06:15:28 pm
The tesla coil is highly effective but has about a 33% lethality rate, and they either wake up very fast or die quickly of system shock so  either need to get my KOs last or KO my target then grab them and run back to the landing craft before they wake up which is what I ended up doing. I'd hate to sink a lot of resources into dropping a silver towers only to kill the coordinator by accident though. What VooDoo is best for non lethal capture? Wand of Peace? All my soldiers have 50-60 voodoo power and 40 voodoo skill but due to being unable to find any gems I can't make any decent voodoo outfits

I tried looking in the game files but I can't find any section that refers to where specific units appear. I know that the star god coordinators are called ethereal commanders in the files but that's all, no clue as to where they appear. Perhaps they can be on battleships and bases like in UFO defense? But the star gods don't have any bases so I'll have to get ready to shoot down a battleship I guess
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: greattuna on August 23, 2017, 07:05:25 pm
Just like in vanilla, they spawn in bases, on crackdowns and on cruisers (vanilla battleships == piratez cruisers) + a few more ship types, like hotrod and silver towers.

Anything that deals charm\mind damage will work well enough on them. They are resistant to these types of damage too, charm\mind attacks either bypass armor or damage it (or both), so it's not a big deal.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 23, 2017, 07:33:36 pm
Thanks for the good info! I see both battleships and cruisers in this game. So coordinators appear on cruisers but not on battleships? Or are you saying that battleships are cruisers? I'll try to bait them into a crackdown on my main base if I can but it's not really something I can control and they never try to find my europe base it seems like.

I was just about to build a fleet to down a silver towers or a battleship. We can already take cruisers so I'll bring a cruiser down if they appear on that, but if you mean battleships then I need more firepower. I was thinking of 12 barracudas as my ultimate attack fleet. To reduce the chance of being taken down suddenly I will equip each one with 2 LT shield generators, and I'll give them 2 ripper cannons for the very high damage per second. While they will lose some accuracy, they get a 200% aim bonus for the v large size, and a additional aim bonus for being 120aim with the sniper outfit equipped. This should ensure that due to the high damage and fire rate of the craft the 2 LT shield generators will give time to pull back when shields reach 35-50% yet allow plenty of firing time, and with 12 craft I can quickly replace retreating interceptors with reserves to keep a constant fire rate. The battleships usually don't move all that fast while searching or peacekeeping so the low barracuda speed is a non issue, and with 1 pilot each I can easily have 12 fully trained interceptor pilots if I pull a few from my A team.

None of this matters if coordinators do really appear on cruisers though. You said cruisers == battleships, do you mean they have identical crews or that when you say cruiser what you mean is battleship?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 23, 2017, 07:46:09 pm
I just researched tractor beam and it says it can force a landing. Can I put like 4 tractor beams on 4 dragons for a total of 16, and then instantly force anything I want to land? If I send 4 dragons and have my landing craft there as well then perhaps it will give me the option to board them while they've been forced to land? If so, I need to know how to make a stormtrooper outfit
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: ohartenstein23 on August 23, 2017, 08:00:52 pm
I just researched tractor beam and it says it can force a landing. Can I put like 4 tractor beams on 4 dragons for a total of 16, and then instantly force anything I want to land? If I send 4 dragons and have my landing craft there as well then perhaps it will give me the option to board them while they've been forced to land? If so, I need to know how to make a stormtrooper outfit

Not everything, you'd only be able to force landings on very large shippings up to 3200 max speed with 16 total beams, and larges up to 6400 max speed.  Anything medium or smaller would be pretty easy to force to the ground.  For the larger stuff, they just help prevent the shipping from outrunning you.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 23, 2017, 08:02:09 pm
Ah well, barracudas it is then. Thanks! So star god coordinators appear on cruisers?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: ohartenstein23 on August 23, 2017, 08:20:11 pm
My favorite way to get a coordinator is to incite a crackdown - getting your base attacked is a good way to guarantee the presence of a VIP.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Marza on August 23, 2017, 09:27:40 pm
...battleships then I need more firepower... 2 ripper cannons for the very high damage per second...

HIT THEIR SHIELDS!
HIT THEIR SHIELDS!
HIT THEIR SHIELDS!
HIT THEIR SHIELDS!
HIT THEIR SHIELDS!
HIT THEIR SHIELDS!
HIT THEIR SHIELDS!
HIT THEIR SHIELDS!
ENEMY SHIELDS DOWN!
BOUNCED OFF THE HULL!
BOUNCED OFF THE HULL!
BOUNCED OFF THE HULL!
BOUNCED OFF THE HULL!
BOUNCED OFF THE HULL!
BOUNCED OFF THE HULL!
BOUNCED OFF THE HULL!
BOUNCED OFF THE HULL!
BOUNCED OFF THE HULL!
BOUNCED OFF THE HULL!

Bigger guns may be required. Much bigger.

If I remember correctly, the outfit a pilot is wearing has no impact on their accuracy, evasion and approach speed during interception. So that's one less thing to worry about.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Ethereal_Medic on August 23, 2017, 09:36:28 pm
Shields are one thing. Inbuild armor values are the next thing to be considered.
Yes, outfits do not offer any bonus for your pilots.
If they remain pilots only they can basically fly topless/nude and do gud.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 24, 2017, 12:02:53 am
I just compared the x piratez wiki section on craft weapons to my ingame bootypedia and it seems the wiki is outdated, my lascannons performed so well because they hit a lot harder than the wiki says. Wiki says 16 dmg but it's actually 36 dmg compared to the ripper cannon's 22.

I just had a thought, if I use a dragon to down ships then do the pilots each get a chance for a bravery increase? Could be a good way to train bravery.

I already went ahead and made the ripper cannons and barracudas but I have a new plan. I assault the battleship with all 12 interceptors. The first assault will be 4 barracudas equipped with 2 l shield generators and 2 lascannons, these are to strip away the shields. After the shields go down I retreat the barracudas and send in the next 4 interceptors which will be Sabres. The reason is because I need a craft that can use missiles and which only requires 1 pilot and can survive some attacks. The Sabres will be expensive in force circuitry but I've got a base dedicated to buying and enslaving beastmasters for their force circuitry so I think I can get the shield generators I need. The Sabres will each have 1 light shield generator, 1 lascannon and 2 meteor missile launchers. Although Sabres are squishy, with their inbuilt shield and an additional shield they can take 1-2 hit. They lack the barracuda dodge but if one takes a hit I'll pull it back out of firing range then send it back in while the aggro switches to another. Meteors only have 3 shots so it wont take long for them to fire their payload and then I'll retreat them and send in the next 4. The lascannon are to keep the shields completely down but I'm considering swapping them for more shield generators (I'm just worried we won't have the firepower to bring down the battleship/silver towers if some missiles are hitting regenerating shields)

After the Sabres have fired their missiles they retreat and if the ship still hasn't gone down I'll send the barracudas back in to try and finish it off with their lascannons, relying on their high dodge, double shields and decent HP to endure long enough to bring it down. I considered bringing in a tanking craft but considering the tanking crafts aren't that much tankier than interceptors when you take The dodge of barracudas into consideration it might not be worth it. On the other hand a single dragon stationed at my main base and piloted by 5 of my A team (I'll feel safer with a 5 pilot crew knowing they live in my main base) and armed with 4 plasma cannons should be able to do some tremendous damage. All I'd need to do is let my barracudas draw fire while my dragon hammers it with it's heavy hitting plasma beams, with the pilot aim bonus and the aim bonus to ship size those plasma cannons should have the power to drop it at least twice over, I could give the barracudas 2 shield generators each and lascannons to help keep the shields down, then have the second wave with only shields equipped

EDIT: I've got an even better idea. I send my Sabre to another base from my main base, and then I put 2 dragons in my main base. They're pretty beefy already with an inbuilt shield and a ton of health. I'll use barracudas with shield generators as tanks and let my dragons do the work.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 24, 2017, 02:00:16 am
Well my monster dragons are ready. 1 of them just soloed a cruiser, next star god battleship/cruiser/silver towers will be mine!

EDIT: Dragons couldn't even catch the silver towers XD. I'll try with the barracudas. They have nice shields but they apparently don't have any armor, it shouldn't be any harder than a cruiser
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Marza on August 24, 2017, 02:44:43 am
Shouldn't be any harder than a cruiser, eh?

 ;D
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 24, 2017, 03:23:15 am
Well I took a star god cruiser down. When we got there we saw a dead star god in the engine. We cleared the map and there wasnt a star god coordinator, but the dead star god might have been a coordinator so maybe just unlucky this time

This is starting to remind me of that cartoon with the villains trying to catch a pigeon XD
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KateMicucci on August 24, 2017, 04:26:55 am
I've got plasma weapons researched but apparently you need an industrial printer to build them now. To build the industrial printer I need three industrial scanners. I was selling all of my crap that wasn't used in manufacturing other things and apperantly buildings aren't included on the list.

Where the heck has industrial scanners? I thought extractors used to have them but didn't find any on the last couple I shot down.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: ohartenstein23 on August 24, 2017, 04:58:14 am
A couple of shippings have them, like certain Cutters.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: legionof1 on August 24, 2017, 04:58:48 am
I just compared the x piratez wiki section on craft weapons to my ingame bootypedia and it seems the wiki is outdated, my lascannons performed so well because they hit a lot harder than the wiki says. Wiki says 16 dmg but it's actually 36 dmg compared to the ripper cannon's 22.
snip

Yeah wiki is sorely outdated in a number of aspects. Alot of things have had stat adjustments, sometimes several times since the articles where last updated. Not very many of us spend time parseing rule set files, let alone with each up date. Feel free to contribute updates if you have spare time.   
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 24, 2017, 11:05:17 am
I'll see if I can. I'm not good with techy things but if it turns out to be simple like changing a word file then I'll do it :)
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 24, 2017, 01:32:33 pm
Ok I just took down another cruiser and there wasn't a star god coordinator inside

Are you sure that they appear in cruisers?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 24, 2017, 03:44:57 pm
Third cruiser, no coordinator.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 24, 2017, 04:03:48 pm
Totally can't do the silver towers with barracudas it keeps speeding up and it leaves pretty fast. Fortunately doesn't hit too terribly hard, I'm gonna try making a Sabre fleet since I've not really been using my barracudas lately now the dragons can handle the big ships and the sabre catches the smaller ones for me
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 24, 2017, 05:25:07 pm
Ok so now I've got 12 sabres with maxed out pilots. Each one has 2 meteor launchers, a lascannon and a light shield generator. This time I'll definetly catch that silver towers!
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 24, 2017, 07:31:47 pm
I did it! The Star Gods sent out a peacekeeping battleship and there was a star god coordinator on board! Now all I need to do is finish the bravery training (using the dragon), finish farming synthmuscle for my annihilator suits, and construct my starship. None of that should be dangerous so I think I'm in the home stretch now
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 24, 2017, 08:17:40 pm
Do you think it's a good idea to bring a cyberdisc with me to cydonia to spot star gods and mercenaries?
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: Ethereal_Medic on August 24, 2017, 08:35:16 pm
Hovertank with aoe-weapon does better.
The disk will most likely die in one gauss-/plasmashot
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 24, 2017, 10:42:38 pm
I can confirm that 12 sabres equipped with 1 lascannon, 1 l shield gen and 2 meteor missile launchers cannot bring down a silver towers. They can't even get through the shields.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: ohartenstein23 on August 24, 2017, 10:58:02 pm
As intended.  By the way, as soon as you leave the interception window such that geoscape time starts up again, the shields regen rather quickly, even if you took them down previously.  Tesla cannons are good at reducing their shields to nothing, if you have some backup weaponry ready to fire as soon as they're down.  Try Sabre with 2x Tesla, 2x Thruster for the gals you send in range first, then maybe 2x Tesla, 2x Hammermite for the other 2-3 Sabres in combat.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 24, 2017, 11:55:46 pm
If I ever try to take one down again I will

So now I'm ready for the final mission. My setup is 36 people maxed in everything except melee and throwing. 2 have blaster bomb launchers, half of the rest have 37mm rifles, the other half have heavy plasmas. The 37mm rifle users also carry an advanced medpack and a cake, the plasma users also carry cake, advanced medpacks and a lot of flares. Does anyone have anything else to suggest that I bring before I start?

I have no idea what I'm going to see on Cydonia. I'm assuming the setup will be just like UFO defense except with piratez enemies instead of ufo defense enemies. The plan was to fire a lot of blaster bombs out of the craft at the very beginning and level the landscape a bit, killing a lot of the enemies and removing cover. After I'm done carpet bombing I will throw a lot of flares out to try and light the place up. I'll use 37mm for star god, cyberdisk, academy, traders and church enemies, and use the heavy plasmas to kill other HWP, mercenaries, traders and academy. This way the pierce resistant HWP and mercenaries go down to plasma fire, and the plasma resistant church, star gods and cyberdisks drop to the 37mm fire. I considered swapping the 37mm for the gauss sniper but the extra TU cost is just too prohibitive

I guess my main concern here is star gods since if the conqueror is anything like the avenger I won't have slidey doors to work with and we could end up in a situation where we're being hit with ghost beams from enemies who we can't see, or if the exit ramp is open to the enemy we could end up taking a lot of blaster bomb fire

For the base assault section I have 2 main concerns. One is blaster bombs which could potentially come from anywhere in the maze-like building with so many corners, and the other is that if I camp too much I might actually kill everyone and end the mission without killing the solar governor which would feel like a massive let down to me, I need to end this section by personally destroying the solar governor to feel satisfied!

Any advice for me in this final hour? I'll launch in about 30 minutes!
Title: Re: Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. About to start final mission!
Post by: Solarius Scorch on August 25, 2017, 12:00:51 am
Kaneko no Nikki? (Kaneko's Diary.)

So exciting! XD
Title: Re: Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. About to start final mission!
Post by: greattuna on August 25, 2017, 12:09:54 am
First stage is dozens of mercenaries with tanks, second - dozens of star gods with sectopods. That's pretty much it, if you have all 36 gals in annihilator armor, you'll win easily. Oh yeah, bring more ammo than you need, and have it in inventories, or you'll be like me and enter second stage with some of the gals out-of-ammo.

You will have 13 slidey doors to work with, don't worry, you silly camper. Or even more, conqueror is a big ship.
Title: Re: Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. About to start final mission!
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 25, 2017, 12:26:15 am
Haha, ok I'll update watashi no nikki when the massacre is over!
Title: Re: Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. About to start final mission!
Post by: khade on August 25, 2017, 12:47:04 am
I'm pretty sure that you can't win by killing every enemy and avoiding the Governor.  But you can win by avoiding everyone and blowing the Governor to *Earth.


*Worst place to be
Title: Re: Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. About to start final mission!
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 25, 2017, 01:40:02 am
There's no governor in this base! We've explored the whole place including a room that looks like his chambers and it's empty. We'll kill the enemies (even tho I lost a lot of people running past them) but I don't know what will happen, maybe I was supposed to kill every enemy?
Title: Re: Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. About to start final mission!
Post by: ivandogovich on August 25, 2017, 01:52:28 am
hmm.. just checked the final mission in Poet's campaign.  He ended it by killing everyone on the level, as well.
Title: Re: Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. About to start final mission!
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 25, 2017, 02:22:54 am
Yeah the brain was removed. It's a shame really, I prefer progressing towards an objective over hunting down every last enemy, we fought so long to get to this base and we didn't even get to kill the enemy leader in-game :/

Well anyway after I realised we had to kill everything we finished up smearing the enemy across their base. After many hundreds of years, earth is finally free!

For those reading this thread who were using it for information here's how the final missions went on level 5 (jack sparrow) difficulty:

1) The landing - We landed right next to the elevator pyramid. The map had only mercenaries and it seems they don't see so well in the dark so we just walked into the elevator building with no effort to stop us, had to kill a couple of enemies around the building but it was pretty bloodless

2) The base - So we kept getting a message saying the solar governor is making us lose morale, but we were bravery maxed and killed a lot so we didnt notice it even tho so many of us died. The solar governors chambers are empty. The alien base is pretty tiny, 1 main floor consisting of about 20 square rooms in a 4x5 grid. There are elevators up into mostly empty rooms. There were about 10 sectopods and 20 star gods of varying ranks. We killed 5-6 coordinators in total and it seems they can successfully mind control a 100 bravery, 50 voodoo power, 40 voodoo skill, annihilator armour soldier tho only rarely, and just standing your soldiers close to each other makes them miss their shots at each other. There was only 1 star god guardian with a blaster bomb launcher. There were about 5 novices, 5 operatives, 5 coordinators and 5 guardians down there. In the end the only thing that could do real damage was the sectopods so we just formed a line and swept the map, ignoring the star god ghost beams and shooting any visible sectopods or guardians before advancing. We didn't sweep the rooms for invisible star gods, we just advanced to the next doorways and if we got shot with a ghost beam from behind I sent some of the people in the back to deal with the nuisance. With so much magical cake we could easily heal the small damage we took from beams. I suggest when you play this you form up your group and then just sweep the map. Heavy plasmas seemed to perform better at killing sectopods than 37mm rifles, perhaps due to their anti armor properties, and although the 37mm rifle was an effective weapon against star gods the heavy plasmas killed them just as easily so I might as well have gone all heavy plasmas

Anyway good luck if you plan to do this. It's really quite easy and I could've done it with a lot less preparation really. Even harbinger armor would be fine altho it will result in you losing some people to sectopod reaction fire, there just isn't enough sectopods to stop a group of 36 harbinger and heavy plasma soldier if you focus fire on each sectopod one by one as you advance so that you only take reaction fire from it once before it gets killed. The sectopods had only a 33% or so chance of killing us in 1 hit anyway, and went down in around 20-30 heavy plasma shots which with auto-fire means you only need to focus fire with 4-5 soldiers to kill one, and you have 36 so it's really easy to nuke them on your turn!

Still kinda bummed out I didn't get to kill the solar governor, I brought a black power bomb specifically for him which I have had since the beginning of the game, perhaps I'll finish my UFO defense superhuman game someday (I made it to the psi grind phase)

Thank everyone so much for the help, couldn't have made it without all your support!
Title: Re: Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. Game complete!
Post by: Ethereal_Medic on August 25, 2017, 02:47:06 am
Harbinger is not allowed on Cydonia :3
Spacesuit
Loader
Annihilator
Ghost
Bio Suit (+ new upgrade)
Superhero

are the allowed outfits only.

Title: Re: Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. Game complete!
Post by: greattuna on August 25, 2017, 02:51:40 am
Harbinger is allowed on Cydonia. Not only it's stated so (look up harbinger (EVA) in bootypedia, it's spaceworthy), I used the harbingers there myself.
Title: Re: Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. Game complete!
Post by: Ethereal_Medic on August 25, 2017, 03:07:56 am
Looks like bootypedia lied to me.
Title: Re: Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. Game complete!
Post by: BBHood217 on August 25, 2017, 04:02:10 am
The annoying thing about ethereals is that like in vanilla Xcom, you can't tell apart their high ranking members; that white-robed jerk could be a novice, operator, or coordinator.

Also, no brain?  That's odd.  When I completed my campaign back in version 0.99G1, there was a brain to kill.
Title: Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread
Post by: KateMicucci on August 25, 2017, 06:42:58 am
A couple of shippings have them, like certain Cutters.
I've shot down five cutters and none had an industrial scanner. Also thought I might find one at a trader base or organ grinder mission but no. Very frustrating that I'm locked out of a lot of good stuff until I find three.
Title: Re: Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. Game complete!
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 25, 2017, 09:47:09 am
The annoying thing about ethereals is that like in vanilla Xcom, you can't tell apart their high ranking members; that white-robed jerk could be a novice, operator, or coordinator.

Also, no brain?  That's odd.  When I completed my campaign back in version 0.99G1, there was a brain to kill.

Actually you can tell them apart!

If you click the middle mouse button on them it shows you their portrait, their name, what gun/magic they are using, and if they are bleeding or not! Also if you hold down alt it tells you where they are looking, very good for spotting and shooting enemies who you can somehow see in the black area of the map where you can't work out where they are, what they are, what weapon they are using and where they are looking, just click the middle mouse button or the mouse wheel!
Title: Re: Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. Game complete!
Post by: Marza on August 25, 2017, 09:47:26 am
Cutters do sometimes drop industrial scanners.

They may be locked to cutters on a resource extraction mission though, I'm not sure.
Title: Re: Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. Game complete!
Post by: Solarius Scorch on August 25, 2017, 11:56:07 am
Cutters do sometimes drop industrial scanners.

They may be locked to cutters on a resource extraction mission though, I'm not sure.

No, it's just RNG. UFOs have a variety of maps, it is random which one is selected.
Title: Re: Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. Game complete!
Post by: KiriKaneko on August 25, 2017, 10:27:13 pm
Well I'm off now, thanks a lot for all the help with my campaign

I'd like to suggest to Dioxine:
1) Nerf 37mm rifle, IMO it need an increase to 60% TU for snapshot, 90% TU for aimed shot, lower accuracy %s and about 20-40 less damage
2) Nerf the higher end ballistic tier weapons like LAC and Light Cannon, or else buff the laser tier because by the time I unlocked lower end laser guns like las gun, or higher tier like nuclear lasers from russian files they were overshadowed initially by LACC/light cannon and then by 37mm which is available mid game and a solid solution to anything but mercs (which it can still handle currently)
3) Nerf the shadowbat. It's currently a very early game flying fortress. I suggest you change the stairs with slidey doors into an open ramp like the skyranger, and you add ladders under the wings that enemies can climb up to get on top of the wings. This should make it far less effective for camping. You should also increase the resilience of the supports under the wings because I was deliberately shooting them with 37mm/heavy plasma to allow me to see better while I camp
4) Probably should nerf the barracuda as well, I suggest dropping the dodge to 10% and the toughness to 175. I would've used it as my exclusive interceptor if only it could effectively catch sentries, and I kept only one sabre on hand for that (I had a fleet of sabres to take down a silver towers which they failed to do, for all the difference it made I might as well have stuck with the barracudas who performed spectacularly until the end)
5) Put key tech in underwater, space, organ grinder, monster hunting and mansion raids. I did some underwater missions trying to find gems which I never found so it was a waste of time, I did some organ grinders looking for gems which I didnt find either and quit it after I lost one of my elites to a mere ghoul, I did one mansion raid where I basically just sprinted to the roof and evacced immediately, I did monster hunting only in the late game for some training, and I never did a single space mission. I could have skipped every one of these missions, and considering the high risk involved I may as well have. I also only did 1 of the church bounty hunts and never did the gang bounty hunt due to the risk involved and because I really didn't have an incentive to take that kind of a risk. Placing key tech on these missions would have pushed me to do them, as otherwise it's a stronger strategy (especially as an inexperienced player) to skip them
6) Remove early guns from the market (I'd gate the market for them behind back to school) to force players to use primitive tech like bows, javelins and gunpowder weapons. Gunpowder should be available after bows, and chainmail should be available way before tac vests. Otherwise you start off with low grade firearms and research primitive tech that's a big step backwards in terms of tech level, it's like starting with plasma weapons and unlocking the option for ballistic weapons. You could still loot stuff like niners and old carbines from enemies but would be limited to ammo that was looted from them so they would end up few in number. Perhaps gun wielding enemies should not appear for a few months and early missions are raiding tribals equipped with spears, swords, bows and muskets

And that's all really. Great mod, I had tremendous fun playing, good job Dioxine!
Title: Re: Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. Game complete!
Post by: sinisteragent on August 25, 2017, 11:40:53 pm
Well done on completing the game, I've not even played it during the few weeks it's taken you to do that!

Please don't make the underwater/ghoul/hunting/etc missions mandatory. There is already a LOT of mandatory stuff and I really hate some of those missions. Being forced to do everything would put a sizeable portion of people off. Simply rewarding people who choose to do them with bonuses works fine as it is.

I'm quite happy with primitive guns being available early. You can capture a decent stash of guns early on anyway, being unable to buy them just means dicking about, it doesnt really force players to use earlier tech much, and if they don't like those early weapons they'll resent it anyway. In particular, relying heavily on bows should be a strategic choice, not your only option. Not everyone tries or wants to play for maximum efficiency - I for one use bows and javelins for fun as much as anything else, and I use the flintlock pistols a fair bit even though they're probably the worst gun in the game.

Relatedly, if you nerfed the light cannon I doubt I'd ever use it. It's slow and heavy and not all that accurate, I barely use it as is. However much you fine tune every weapon, with so much in this game, someone's going to find one or two weapons they like to powergame with. Unless it's obviously the Ultimate Weapon (e.g. heavy plasma in UFO, which outdoes everything in almost every way, has no downsides and whose supply is self-sustaining before long), it may not be necessary to prune everything. This is all especially true when you're using one very specific strategy that, while obviously effective, most people would find tremendously boring.
Title: Re: Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. Game complete!
Post by: tylor on August 26, 2017, 12:51:51 am
37mm does not seems to be particularly op for me. There i a lot of comparable Gauss guns.
Laser is indeed seem to be kinda weak, though, even Post-Russia nuclear models.
Title: Re: Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. Game complete!
Post by: Ethereal_Medic on August 26, 2017, 12:57:49 am
Lasers are designed to counter high armor since many targets don't have much laser resistance.
The 1/3 armorpen is balanced with the low base damage.
Otherwise they would be just better piercing weaponry.
Title: Re: Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. Game complete!
Post by: wolfreal on August 26, 2017, 12:59:19 am
Congrats for finishing your campaign!.
Title: Re: Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. Game complete!
Post by: KateMicucci on August 26, 2017, 04:27:19 am
I mostly disagree with those suggestions.

1. There are plenty of guns that are just as good as the 37mm. Autos are better for pure reliable damage output, laser/plas is better against mercs, rockets and bombs are better for burst damage. If it was nerfed I'd use one of those other guns. With a nerf as massive as you're proposing I'd definitely NEVER use it.
2. The LACC has never impressed me at all- it's in an awkward middle ground where it's either less accurate, slower or less powerful than the other options available at the same time and so fills no niche well. The LC I've used a lot because it's the most powerful gun besides the slugthrower you can get at that stage of the game, but it only gets off one inaccurate aimed shot a turn and begs for a reaction shot if it fails to kill. The non-heavy lasers like the hydra and lasgun indeed don't really impress me and feel like they're becoming available a little late right now, but they at least fill a role in space missions and would perform decently if there just weren't better options available (smartguns and custom shooty gun filled my longgun needs at that stage this game)

If anything should be nerfed it's a few of the pistols. Between the Super Magnum, Death Blossom HVAP and Mini Cougar there's no reason to use any of the other pistols even with their ammo upgrades.
5. Those missions are annoying because they require equipping and then re-equipping everyone once you're done.
6. With a few exceptions, the very early guns are really not so good- no reason to gate them. Bows are very useful against early low-hp enemies as they can arc and hit a long way away, and javelins I'm still using even pretty far into the game. A maxed gal can pretty easily take out even a Marsec Bodyguard with javelins and I've even taken out a tank using two maxed javelin gals throwing from behind a wall. There is use even for Good Lookin' Rocks alongside early guns. Muskets aren't so hot but they're already much better than they used to be, and even with video game logic it's hard to have them compete favorably with breechloaders. Tac vests are garbage so why should they be behind chainmail?
Title: Re: Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. Game complete!
Post by: HT on August 26, 2017, 11:52:50 am
Congrats for finishing the game! I'll be sure to skim through your ntes whenever I feel stuck in my playthrough.  :)

As for your recommendations, I agree that unlocking the low-tech merchants early is okay, it's part of the campy setting and seeing how melee works, chances are you'll still use primitive weapons anyway in spite of having access to several guns.

Speaking of recommendations, I have one: Why aren't there flame arrows for the Combat Bow? It's identical to the Hunting Bow but better and cheaper, yet the infinitely superior flame arrows aren't seemingly compatible with that one, even though it would make sense (unless I misread the ufopaedia entry and they can be used without issues).
Title: Re: Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. Game complete!
Post by: JustTheDude/CABSHEP on August 26, 2017, 05:23:28 pm
What is the point in having snapshot for more than a half AP in a weapon that is not a sniper rifle? 37mm Rifle is meant to use with power armor and gals in power armor are poor snipers.

Camping in craft is more about playstyle, than craft or difficulty itself. Only enemies with baby nukes in open areas force to stay in craft. Also sectopod and Boomsaur are dangerous enough. I found myself doing it for more than 6 turn when gauss enemies show up in the night around my airbus.

Don't need to encourage me to do underwater mission. One sunken USO gives enough aqua plastic to fill needs for one-two years, or pay bills once, guarded by crabs, fish or shark people.
Space mission are related to shadowtech haters mission not yet in the game (or only not in 99G5) and I think it's the only way to get syns (I miss more robots and cyborgs in this mod early). Mansions are pain in the ass for me. When I went there for the frist time, on my next playtrough I don't even research it. Organ grinder is kinda pointless. Early on it involves too much risk with that acid, smoke, combustible pipes all over the place, blood hounds, close areas and ghoul bullet sponges, but gives nothing good in exchange for that. Later it is just a mission where you know you don't get any high-tech, or valuable stuff so why bother?
Monsters hunting missions are good source of training and cash early. It's fairly easy, mayby only blood hounds are dangerous. For shambler there is only need for one gal and a molotov.

There is no need to change anything in black market. By the time to research it, its easy to get enough firearms to arm that few gals you have in start.
Title: Re: Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. Game complete!
Post by: BBHood217 on August 30, 2017, 06:32:06 am
However much you fine tune every weapon, with so much in this game, someone's going to find one or two weapons they like to powergame with.

I swear by lasers in vanilla Xcom, so I did the same here with acceptable results.  If I play another game, I might try out the other guns especially now that I know what they're capable of.
Title: Re: Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. Game complete!
Post by: Martin on August 30, 2017, 09:29:54 am
Terror ship should be stronger. Most of the menace class have no problem taking it down even when equipped with primitive weapons (50mm cannon, seagul missiles, 105mm rockets), the ones with innate shields don’t even need repairtime afterwards.
Title: Re: Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. Game complete!
Post by: JustTheDude/CABSHEP on August 30, 2017, 10:22:08 am
Do you do it with one craft equipped with that promitive (still banned from use by star gods) weaponry, or all 4? I'm not sure, don't 50mm cannon and seagul missiles have the same stats like vanilla counterparts?
Title: Re: Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. Game complete!
Post by: Martin on August 30, 2017, 01:28:18 pm
Perfectly viable with just a single craft. Fortuna is especially good at it.