OpenXcom Forum
Modding => Released Mods => XPiratez => Topic started by: legionof1 on July 22, 2018, 08:22:37 pm
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Okay so started the first new campaign in several months, and i thought since the overall game had changed quite abit in that time, i decided i would share the experience and my thoughts as it is played. I also set myself a bit of an extra challenge.
Started on 0.99J4
The challenge: No firearms of any kind including lasers, guass, and plasma; only melee, bows, thrown weapons(including nades) and voodoo permitted. Red codex as we are trying to push the melee focus. If i find i cant make it any farther i will relax the restriction and allow the slaves/loknarrs some stuff.
I will post a summary of events and my thoughts every six months of in game time. Here we go.
Status report 1: Stumbles, bumbles, and handles to the rescue
Had quite a few false starts due to the new gal types. Getting more then one specter in the initial pool is...problematic. 3rd times the charm thou only had one, 3 repentias and 2 gals. Loaded up with handles as our initial weapon, and the usual assortment of bandages, canteens and whatnot. First mission is a landing of Dr. Xs fugitive hunters.
First battle goes pretty well no injuries and all foes captured, Specter, ironically named Armored Lana, proves less then useful in any capacity. We shall see if this ever changes.
But thankfully we get some crackhouses and distress calls so we can bolster our ranks with more of the living. Distress calls arn't so bad for the most part, but the crackhouses involve alot of tense camping and working LOS hard. Specter comes out to the field a few more times to sub for for the injured, but again is very lackluster.
A bit of a captive overload occurs since brainers to keep up with the influx are far to expensive to hire, oh well there will be more. We do eek out a few more Brainers and recruit the saved castaways when Rare earths allow.
In the base we put up a pair of plantation and a mess hall fairly quickly to combat costs, and ease the wounded timers.
Few months pass with a combination of Ratmen rodeos, loknarr villages, and saving more castaways from various perils. We add javelins to our arsenal for some punch and just in time too cause shortly after they are built we need to handle werewolves at blood rituals and distress calls, and a shambler hunt. Not testing our luck with pogroms just yet and also passing on watch towers cause i forgot the tech path to make more bombs for awhile.
Injuries are common but nobody is dead yet. Whats this about a tavern celler? oh fuck that's alot of rats. Everybody lives, barely, ran out of medical items, but the repentias held the passages. Looks like we are taking May off ladies, cause our shortest recovery is 23 days longest is 45. Down to the specter and 2 others.
mmm landed ufo, should i? yah lest go look at least, oh larger sectoid ship, cant crack the mechtoid with current gear, so lets nab a few captives and get out. Had to leave the weapons behind :'(
Oh birthday cake time already? Lets see what we have managed. We have javelins, an assortment of lower tier nades, the repentias have barbarian(S) armor, gals are in rouge. We have eeked out 10 brainers and somehow afforded/researched our way to a blowfish and the gals to fill it with some spares. Still need a wrench and durathread to get the workshop so codex is still waiting. Probably time to start doing the tech for additional missions.
Seeya in the next report.
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A separate post(for clarity's sake) about some mechanics/balance issues for the very early game, after some time digging around in the viewer/rulesets to see how stuff actually is since my early game knowledge was severely out of date.
Watchtowers can be somewhat problematic to handle once the small initial store of explosives is gone.
New bomb manufacture is 4 techs deep and has 12 total prerequisites. Pickaxe is in a very similar position. So 12 techs in the right order on 3 brainers, before you use up the initial 3 black powder bombs and the handful of less reliable Molotov's. And that's if you know exactly the path to take.
The initial hammer can go through the wall with sufficient str, but such str is not assured. And you might lose the thing before you can make more
Having to pass up one of the easier early missions for lack of gear once the tiny initial stocks run out is kinda frustrating. And easy to do since you need 3/4 of the violence, cunning, survival, weirdness group for either demolition gear option. I would bring up the initial black powder bomb count up a smidgen.
Recruitment, the squeaky wheel here is the specters and to a lesser extent the repentia messing with the initial pool.
Early on 50k a pop for a body is pretty expensive and at least so far the specter as been an active hindrance to success, more on that later. Needing to replace every specter the initial pool at 50k a head is......well.
Repentias also mess with early performance results, but its mixed news. They reduce the pool of promote-able gals so overall salary is lower, but it does hurt trying to use rank scaled stuff, which trickles down to making gold codex initially worse something it doesn't need help with.
Specters, well its a decent concept but the result is at best questionable, particularly when your in the very early stages.
The terror is expensive to use with a wide variance in effectiveness and even how often in a turn it can be used. The worst case is one use every 3 turns with an accuracy of 60. The best is once a turn with a burst of 2 in one turn at 96 accuracy. And this is a psi panic, multiple hits are required to have any outward effect, which is only in effect for a single turn.
the light is really situational, 15 power when you yourself are spotted at 10 is not much leeway for a unit that dies to almost any weapon you face in a single hit.
Next is the bravery/morale situation. Specters may not have combat stress to account for but they use morale to power the terror attack so bravery puts a hard limit on the number of uses, and they have fixed stats. And while they are stress immune they still panic and wander off to get themselves killed which for a unit that is utterly dependent on being unseen to survive, yeah.
The end result is RNG pure and simple, it goes from a panic prone exceptionally limited use weak weapon, to an effective mobile anti morale tool. But getting both good TU, good stamina, good bravery, and good Voodoo power are all necessary to be merely effective. What you get to start is what the specter will be forever. But sense 3 is something i guess? But ill take a parrot/doggo with pre primed nades over even the best specter possible in a heartbeat.
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I don't think specters are a long term unit. For one thing, the only way you could get them normally is by transforming a dead gal.
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long term surely not, but losing out on regular gals in the initial 6 for something that's largely better done by the parrot/doggo, when replacements are 50k a pop or from the limited amount of castaways?
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The Watchtower can be opened up with a Chainsaw as well, so if you lose the Hammer, there's always that.
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The "puppet" infront of the Watchtower can also be shot by many forms of low-tech weapons.
Flintlock pistol with those raw 44 base-damage can roll high enough to make the puppet explode and clear the way.
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Report 2: Hatch abuse volume 1.
With a blowfish to amp up our number of club wielding lunatics on the feild, we expand our mission pool to include bandit towns, warehouse wars and bounty hunting.
Workshop is the goal we are aimed for but it ends up taking till mid October researching warehouse wars captives. Eventually we empty out the entire low tier guild units pool of possibilities before getting wrench and durathread working as the very last. And in that time i never see the items themselves. If i wasn't taking 95% or better of most foes as captives this would have taken much longer. Most of the brainer time is spent on captives so not a whole lot else gets teched.
Having filled up the first bases living space and most of the tiles, we save up funds to setup another base to outsource our farms in preparation for the workshop in the main and some manufacturing capacity, mostly to keep shoving out javelins. It gets built in the Artic cause its 200k cheaper.
Dr Xs lackeys come calling on the main base and are super aggressive, although the drones never figure out how to get out of the hangers. But there aggression is there down fall as the gals swarm out of side hatches surrounding them in the ground floor passage of the living quarters and clubing them all out in one turn. Cleanup of the drones takes awhile but only minor injuries. Oh and my black cat panicked and fell into the extractor. Yay damp cat.
Farm base gets up and running and we ship the worst 3 nutjobs and the specter over there to keep an eye on the place. We build up to 7 farms over the following months. One gets used occasionally for weed production cause i know i'm gonna need tons of it.
Wait.....workshop costs how much now???......sheeze. Welp looks like it wont be done till after the new year. Guess we work on bounties in the mean time.
Bandit towns turn out to be a little too hard for us to manage easily with our lack of armor(tools & blades, fuck you wrench) but we do clear one in between bounty runs, the big red barn also turn out to be very difficult to score well on without firearms or large explosives and the efficient barrel bomb is at alchemy which depends on tinkering, which depends on workshop which depends on tool&blades, fucking wrench.
Oh stranded agent, alright lets give that a try, wait just attack dogs? A knew these guys where chumps but come on there's not even a humanoid around. Oh well more points, is more points.
New years rolls around, the farm base has all it farms in service and an extractor and still are planed, the workshop is almost up in the main and we pickup some additional runts in preparation of being able to build some actual decent stuff, Red codex here we come.
Mechanics/balance addendum: Only 2 things to really note here. First is Wrench where art thou? and the techs/gear thereby choked by tools and blades. And Repentia cant use pirate line of outfits?
year 1 stat screen attached
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1 year in the campaign I'd rather have more than 16 "recruited hands" and at least 10 dead scrubs.
"Handle" as the most efficient weapon 8)
Keep up the hard work.
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Um, you could've robbed or killed a Guild personnel for their durathread. That wrench thing does suck, though.
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Well not like i would have done anything with the durathread anyway if i had it. The list of producible armors before workshop is: warrior, barbarian, durathread and scale. Of those only barb actually doesn't hurt a melee/thrower setup with a stamina penalty. And +10 hp+pain resist is so worth it. No extra side armor is kinda suck but hey im engaging at 16 tiles or less if i'm showing myself at all, so is not a huge issue.
As to the gals well, everyone is a found lunatic aside from the 1 specter and the 3 repentias and the one god awful #001 freak(92 str only above normal stat), so ive saved myself about half mil in hiring and a ton of salary. and ive needed every penny so far. Not really clearing as many missions as i might otherwise but the ones i do are about 95% captures so still scoring okay.
And i'm gonna want the lunatics for the extra melee and stamina cap.
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Durathread can be printed into Synthmuscle now!
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My first red barn I managed to tear down compleately with just sawed off shotguns. I had the barn conveniently right beside my landed craft, so map layout was very favorable. Later I used four crates of violence.
I'm a bit astonished about your money problems. My game feels like I'm swimming in gold. I started my game on version I1 which did not have the wrench problem yet. I then focused my research on unlocking missions, not trying to get the wrench. Now I feel like starting a new game to see if I got just lucky with RNG or it really is the game that changed so much.
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Yeah barn is easy, but for extra challenge I'm playing without guns, so slightly more limited in demo options, particularly if its far away.
And yeah cash problems are 100% because of that extra challenge. Lack of long range leads to more overall injuries so fewer missions get done, but near 100% capture rate means good score anyway. Less loot but more tech.
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Report 3: Airborne at last. Sorta
Well we get our workshop rolling and get codex STC craft, but for lack of weapons only the snake actually can be armed, and only then by the lila rockets, which take spikes as ammo, which i cant buy yet cause bounty prize. So still limited to landed craft. Being reliant on RNG from landed craft for ammo, or an 800 token prize, from the alliance. But you require 900 tokens worth of prizes from them already so another 800..ouch
On the tech front Back to School is the next mile stone, which all i'm lacking is sci books. Let's just look up what the unlocks are. Oh *Mutant Alliance* we can do that and we already have the Dr. X path unlocked just need the mission to spawn. Tokens might take awhile thou. Well as it turns out 6 months go by with no spawn of the Dr X arc, and very few missions for alliance tokens. 1700 in needed prizes+the tokens for badges. I might just have to buy my way there. But more bases first.
By june we have added bases in Asia and Australia, with overcharged radars and some combination of workshop/extractor/still production facilities. Mostly these bases are just churning out weapons supplies or the funds to buy said. I do have the tech to make a wide range of explosives, but chems are limited. Not very much is profitable to build in the early game anymore. The best options are low tech weapons that require no components. Farms are 100% your best cash source but there is a severe space constraint and high upfront cost. It takes a month and a half for a single farm to pay itself off. And a further 8-12 months to pay of the construction of the base. With radar and living spaces and some consideration for defense 7 farms per base is the limit.
On the ground we start the process of fitting out everybody in chainmail+protective gear sets for the main crew, and start making grav harnesses when supplies allow to kit out a monster hunter squad. Neither process is fully complete by end of june. There just are not the workers to do everything we need to keep in supply, process captures/trophies, and make new gear. Handles get swapped out for electric clubs around may, since the gals are getting to the point of sending some foe into overstun with one swing, or more notable handle don't do squat against dark ones.
Basically every base gets raided by ratmen at one point or another, some multiple times. The defense of the Arctic farm base is especially messy cause farms are big open spaces with alot of visibility but not paths into the duct-work level. They would be fabulous to defend if i allowed myself guns. But between small garrisons and some reaper(i love reaper cav) and werewolf auxiliaries we do hold the line.
Not really much change in missions out in the world, it takes until late may to actually get our first usable weapon for air combat, to then chase down more weapons. We do catch a few craft on the ground, most notable a falcon smuggler, which was a butt clenching experience when it turned out a fair few of the cat girls had gothic rayguns. Nobody died but it was close and nobody walked away with less then 20 days in recovery.
Despite getting Bounty badge c in February it takes until May to see the first c rank, an archeology dig, filled with fatman zombos. Sigh i need alliance tokens not bank. Grrrrrrr.
Yay cakes, but the tech blockages are starting to wear, amplified by bad RNG.
Balance addendum: Why is so much critical tech tied up in the alliance? martial arts for dojo/training, favors for The Mutant Alliance which is one of the 2 limiters on back to school in addition to gating medical supplies, and durathread. Oh and ammo for your codex weapon if you pick red.
By contrast you only ever require the favors and the single prerequisite prize for the bank and jack. 4-5 prizes vs 2.
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Balance addendum: Why is so much critical tech tied up in the alliance? martial arts for dojo/training, favors for The Mutant Alliance which is one of the 2 limiters on back to school in addition to gating medical supplies, and durathread. Oh and ammo for your codex weapon if you pick red.
By contrast you only ever require the favors and the single prerequisite prize for the bank and jack. 4-5 prizes vs 2.
Aliance tokens are slightly easier to come by, as you can exchange experiment victims from academy outposts for aliance tokens and later on you get a lot of tokens from ghoul towns.
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I feel this thread is kinda enlightening in how even veterans of the mod experienced enough to set themselves pretty ridiculous goals like "no ranged weapons" can struggle with some of the basic design decisions. Maybe some of them ought to be adjusted?
Nobody likes topic spammers, so it's always a hurdle to open up a thread like this, especially for a green player whose experience is somewhat fresher. Maybe there should be an AAR subforum especially intended for such reports - I know I saw something like that in other game forums.
I'd leave my impressions here, but I don't wanna hijack legions thread. ;)
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Well not no ranged weapons, that would be impossible. Just no firearms.
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Report 4: It was fun while it lasted.
Okay this report covers what turned out to be the final 6 and half months of the run.
RNGebus came forth and smote my ass, in December with both a sway government and 2 bases tanking my score and income, and then 6 days into january the main base got curb stomped by stargod retaliation. I might be able to salvage the run and eventually continue but losing the main base along with the menace craft and the best gals is a massive blow that might result in a game over from score anyway as i was already on warning for Decembers debacle. At the very least my research ability is fucked into oblivion. Gonna take 4 million and 20 days of building to get back to the 3 brainer level i started with. So loss of main base means no research infamy this month, and i've got the drain from the 2 active bases to counter. And pogroms are fully active and my ability to fight them just died.
Even if was using the full arsenal at my disposal, 3 sectopods and invisible friends would probably still have wiped the main base, when the best armor i have built is chainmail, and the only feasible options researched for the sectopods are either try to gangbang them with spiked maces, or blow them and half of the base into tiny bits with chinese dragons. So even the best case scenario still puts the main base completely out of action while it rebuilds from collateral or sacrifice most of the gals to the spiked mace plan and hope the survivors can clean up.
And things had been going decently well before i had thought. Back to school was done and i was only missing a live psi user capture to get graduation. The academy was being a bit stingy on there spawns until the bases popped in December, with a live academy base i fully expected to be able to extract an esper or provost and escape then come back with bigger toys. I had just gotten storm marine armor unlocked when the stargods got me.
In the end i was probably far to cautious with my mission selection, 2 year timer to be able to handle stargods without obliterating yourself is actually kinda steep with how slow the early game RNG can make progression.
Speaking to progression getting voodoo started seems rather difficult.
Provost, esper, human mage, magical girl, reticulan elder, Raynerd, or liber occultus translation are the options.
Provost is top tier academy so rather rare in the early game, esper less rare but still not very frequent.
Human mage is an even more rare option considering they will only be on high speed rarely spawning civilian craft, or at least that the only source i know of before the red mage arc which is post voodoo anyway.
Magical girl means getting the ships of love to start spawning and the finding one in all the air traffic without decoders, and thats post workshop, so at least a few months or in my case a year into play.
Elder....so either catch an appropriate probe, trigger a reticulation retaliation, or get the saya prize, you are more likely to see Raynerd before any of these happen.
Reynerd, this ones fairly assured to spawn, but getting up to bounty B takes a not insignificant amount of time.
Liber translation, well 1 book and one reverend minimum, or more likely 2 of one and one of the other, seems rare to me.
Best bet seems to be hitting mansions and every distress call trying for the esper.
Speaking of espers they are a big obstruction to progress with the dr X arc. You can't get the hideout without one alive, glad this is only the secondary route to Sci books.
Getting into the air is still an exercise in RNG, or throw a ton of money at missiles, but past the intial bootstrap issues its pretty manageable. It does however make green codex charger laser really attractive as the only craft weapon fully functional from the tiny drill project. Red codex starts with no ammo and needs a big slug of mutant alliance tokens to unlock purchase. Grey is running on expensive seagulls but needs very few, and gold is running on well gold and starts with 20 shots. Red gets the short end of the stick.
As far as the no firearms challenge i set myself, its remarkably doable, a flexible variety of grenades is pretty easy to get, and javelin and throwing axes are pretty effective. Until the sectopods nothing was unmanageable. Even then maybe it could have been done in fewer numbers.
Hope you all enjoyed my ramblings. Guess ill try again being slightly less silly. Any interest in further reports of this AAR type from the next run?
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Jack Sparrow Supermutant.
Anything else as you like.
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Speaking to progression getting voodoo started seems rather difficult.
Noblewoman can be gotten from the Escape Tower missions fairly easily. It's recommended to clear as much of the fluff topics away first for a higher chance to roll Voodoo, but that's how I did it.
Hope you all enjoyed my ramblings. Guess ill try again being slightly less silly. Any interest in further reports of this AAR type from the next run?
Sure. Always interesting to read how others play.
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Noblewoman can be gotten from the Escape Tower missions fairly easily. It's recommended to clear as much of the fluff topics away first for a higher chance to roll Voodoo, but that's how I did it.
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Human noblewoman doesn't count for the voodoo prerequisite. See screen shot. Yes you can get voodoo itself from the nobles get one free list but that's a list of 70 entries, and about a 5th of those are hard to clear out in a timely fashion, namely the Ancient log X and #X. so at best like 1 in 15 after clearing out the get one free list for a bunch of other sources. Sounds less reliable then finding an esper to me. Oh and what also has ancient logs in there list, Human mages and church reverends so back to the earlier mentions. Other sources include old earth books, which are in mansions or in the hands folks on higher tier ships which leads back to the provost and esper. Statistically the esper is the fastest/easiest route.
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You never got an Escape Tower bounty mission with a human mage? That's just bad luck, like with those ethereals I guess. Also, I don't think sectoids do crackdowns anymore.
Finally, other sources of espers are science vessels (which requires angering the Academy, much like how angering the Guild enables the heavy freighters) and Academy campuses.
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I got one tower in 12 months it was in the pool, its a c rank. And funny thing about guild is alarmed/angry and campuses both require a live esper first.
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Academy means business if you dare to steal the voodoo-waifus.
Rushing voodoo asap only works to a degree and the big payoff aims for witches, sorceress or fairies.
All of those are expensive and locked behind tech and codexes that cuts down options and is simply not a longterm solution.
Voodoo is 'extra' and more of a supportive function. A chainmail/fullplate can work only in temperate enviroment without restrictions. Mobility loss and small inventory. No piercing protection.
The armor values are also not the greatest since those armors are designed to dodge-tank/block enemy melee-attacks and not bullets.
Modern/Advanced Personal Protection and Advanced Firearms/Smart-guns do so much more for the crew.
Access to the blue armors and weapons that help you aim (and have decent ammo-clips + leightweight) carries the campaign better and is more likely to unlock.
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The problem with a no firearms playthrough is that you are not training firing skills, which hurts your air damage output.
My path to get air fighting capabilities:
Get an airspeeder with seagull and shoot megapol craft. These have 25mm cannons and ammo. The police flights need "Contact: Car Thieves" researched to spawn. Once you have a 25mm cannon you can get an aircar and go hunt civies.
Next step is Lokk'Naar and Shark Jetbike. Once you get over 100 reaction on the Lokk'Naar the Jetbike with 25mm cannon can take down anything that is not armored. The Jetbike with a 100 reaction regular gal is still pretty durable.
Once you have the Jetbike with Lokk'Naar your problems shift from surviving to damage output. From hunting low tier craft you get 50mm cannons and gauss cannons. These allow you to go after armored targets. The airspeeder with seagulls is again useful here, now as secondary interceptor.
I haven't gotten real interceptors yet. Let's see what tech is needed to replace the Jetbike as the mainstay of my air power. Probably Predator with thrusters is required to retire the Jetbikes.
Which impact the codex weapons have depends on when you get them in relation to other air tech.
- The conversion launcher is limited by it's total damage. You will have it on an airspeeder. Add a second airspeeder with a regular seagull and you have about Jetbike level of air power, at a higher price with less flexibility (seagull is unsuitable for civies). I think Zaxx token missions spawn regularly enough that the Jetbike will be about 3-5 month lather than your conversion launcher. If you are willing to reload an air combat and have skilled pilots, two airspeeders with regular seagulls can with some exceptions do about the same job.
- The charger laser needs an aircar. The tech to get the aircar will also spawn the megapol flights which will give you 25mm cannons. Depending on RNG, you will get 25mm cannons about 1-3 month after you could have put your charger laser on an aircar. Thats just a few missed civies, not such a big deal. Scavanged ammo is enough to keep your 25mm cannon loaded.
- Little Ilya needs ammo to work. You will likely unlock that after you get Jetbikes. Then you will use it on a secondary interceptor as damage dealer vs armored Ufos. Does the same thing as seagulls, but cheaper.
- Flame cannon and Hawk are comparable to the conversion launcher regarding interception capabilities (if you have a skilled pilot). The damage output is about the same, and the Hawk can tank a bit (depending on pilot evasion). The Hawk is a bit faster than an airspeeder so it's easier to catch things. Ammo is cheaper. Downside is, you will take damage while fighting and then have downtime because of repair.
Bottom line, the codex weapons don't change things that much. And yeah, the Red Codex gets the least help in air combat.
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Great Thread Legionof1! :)
I loved the challenge you set and your write up! Great explanations of the Tech Gate problems.
Cheers!
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Rushing voodoo asap only works to a degree and the big payoff aims for witches, sorceress or fairies.
All of those are expensive and locked behind tech and codexes that cuts down options and is simply not a longterm solution.
Voodoo is 'extra' and more of a supportive function. A chainmail/fullplate can work only in temperate enviroment without restrictions. Mobility loss and small inventory. No piercing protection.
The armor values are also not the greatest since those armors are designed to dodge-tank/block enemy melee-attacks and not bullets.
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Yeah it not the outfits eventually garnered, Voodoo also gates Diplomacy which gates interrogations and school graduation, both are required to complete the game. Chain as follows: Voodoo>Contacts Thebes>Diplomacy>Graduation, Interrogation. Also gates buying captives, and stopping pogroms and sway government and reticulan coop.