Messages

1

From the Ashes / Re: From the Ashes META

« on: May 11, 2022, 10:24:13 am »

I assume, on your playthrough you did not assault it, right?

Correct. I didn't even get a single live MIB the whole playthrough. I capped the commander in the first mission. I took some live military personnel from the covert op where you have to steal an item, however, they died with the no alien containment message.

2

From the Ashes / Re: From the Ashes META

« on: May 10, 2022, 08:27:05 pm »

Second run went much better. Since my playstyle is rifles I put everyone into combat training and specced them into snipers as they were able to, with the addition of Unarmed for close combat. Focused on extra Engineers as soon as possible, had them on chems until Workshop became available, then rushed it and swapped them to combat shield + scrap. Did enough to keep me going until I managed to get a Military convoy, which gave me enough equipment and funding to barely manage until the end. Sold everything except Rifles, corpses, personel and the starting dropship.  Skipped monsters and Osprey, as such nothing much happened in the game.

As of now my thoughts are that most things don't have a place. Score doesn't provide any benefits. Loyalty is basically a binary check of if 0 you die, if >0 you're fine. Resistance being neutral or friendly impacted nothing at all since I didn't really buy much from them, just the Engineers and some troops. Missions don't really provide benefits worth the risks, so I pretty much just went on resistance missions, tested turn 1 what is there, then just hightailed it out of there. Unless there were some soldiers or scientists to save, them I sprinted to my ship asap since the disks actually gave some money. Convoys and the data vault were the only things worth doing.

As is now the mod feels like it obfuscates a lot of mechanics needed for informed play, while being very punishing with very little rewards to be gained. Of course those are just initial impressions, I'll definitely give it another whirl in a year or two to see where it's at then.

Attaching the post game screenshots, hopefully they're of some use to you.

3

From the Ashes / Re: From the Ashes META

« on: May 10, 2022, 01:06:17 am »

Sorry, that seems to be a  bug we missed with testing. This state does not provide any useful info, it would be replaced with different function. Info it shows irrelevant for gameplay, actual funding is always 0 per month.

Ah, I see.

You do. Stat increase is just a minor addition, I am considering even to hide it at all, as they take all player's attention. The most important are passive perks' soldier would get, and their mechanics are described in training state. I do not show exact numbers of those mechanics, it's a design decision.

Ah, I saw the text, but thought it was only lore. Tbf stats are the only things I do look at, and mostly just firing and str as I always go for heaviest armor + rifle or sniper rifle with a few melees here and there. Used to do grenades back in the final mod pack, but after I realized the answer to literally everything in the game is hot potato grenades or high ex I stopped using them altogether in every mod since then, including smokes. Pretty sure I haven't used a single grenade for the past 3000 hours of X-com I have done over the years. I suppose that falls under self imposed challenge category and might be something this mod doesn't support.

I eventually got monster and cultists popups, but no missions from them yet. Plus I do wonder what happens if I say no to those popups? I said no to Osprey, and the only thing it appears to have done is gave me a ufopedia entry and just closed off that chain, meaning that saying no to those popups has no apparent benefits at all. I do understand the coverts have modifiable chances now, since the first time I tried them I had only squaddies and they only got me poor I concluded that's how it is and left them to sit untested. In Xcom 2 I only sent rookies to do covert ops, so I suppose I wrongly expected them to be a rookie training tool in this mod as well. After I put in a few sergeants things changed, tho getting to sergeants is a hell of its own with how extremely easily the troops get mowed down.
Most of the coverts also bugged out, which I realized far too late. Out of the 5 I attempted, two got bugged out. Time slowed to 5 seconds, no popup, days of operation stuck on 18 and 19 respectively even when I tried to just move time forward 3 months to see if they will complete. Both had 5 soldiers on them, while other ops which didn't bug out had 4. Small sample size, but that is a 100% of bugged coverts with 5 soldiers on them.
Edit: Tested on a new game with 5 soldiers, and all the other combinations and couldn't get the same bug to occur. Went back in the old game saves to trace where it happened, and it seems to have happened in the M.I.B. Area Survey on a specific loss outcome, not the Success one and not the ambush one.

 All of that combined means I have to start a new game next time I get enough time to try it out, as this run is both broken from bugs and broken from me overspending money and getting into a debt spiral with no way out.

4

From the Ashes / Re: From the Ashes META

« on: May 09, 2022, 11:06:44 pm »

Going to go right ahead and ask how do you actually play this?

Tried it for a couple of months and I am completely lost.

First off overview says I have 532k funding, my base maintenance is 259k, I end the month with 29k, meaning I should have 276k at the start of a new month, but instead I have -230k. Seems like you are not getting any funding, which I shall assume is a bug.

Second, there are almost no missions and the ones I got had worthless rewards. I had base defence and 2 resistance missions in all. One resistance was to save 1 soldier from infinite zombies, the reward was 1000 bucks and a soldier, the other resistance was crazy nightvision guys with grenade launchers or whatever, just wiped me turn 1.
I tried covert missions, but they just fail and the squad is either wiped or runs away, both outcomes being worthless. I managed to succeed in one, got data vault and not much else, went to continue that chain, failed, and the followup mission disappeared.

Third, what do classes actually do? They require an absurd amount of time to train and get only minor stat boosts, unless I am missing something big here.

Any help would be useful.

5

Released Mods / Re: X-Chronicles Release, v.0.99.5

« on: April 28, 2022, 01:46:33 am »

Thanks for the responses Nord. I eventually did find Rune mages.

Got a bug to report: Protector sells for a lot more than you can buy it for, creating an infinite money source. I know that some items can be sold for more than they can be bought for on lower difficulties, but I quickly jumped into a superhuman game to check and Protector costs $28000 to buy and sells for $44000.

6

Released Mods / Re: X-Chronicles Release, v.0.99.5

« on: April 26, 2022, 12:12:29 pm »

Strange. You researched only Wizard, and no other mages. Capture them, interrogate them and you will be happy.

I did research the Outcast mage completely. The only other mages I have seen are Wizards and the Priestesses or something like that.

If you are thinking of Rune mage, which I did see is a requirement for runes, that is a no go as I have seen none in my game. I thought they were a late-game enemy after wizards.

To be fair there is a good chance I'm just blind and missed them. Which faction do they accompany? The ones I have encountered so far are goblins, orcs, pirates, legionaries and footmen.

7

Released Mods / Re: X-Chronicles Release, v.0.99.5

« on: April 25, 2022, 04:22:08 pm »

Please provide save file.

8

Released Mods / Re: X-Chronicles Release, v.0.99.5

« on: April 24, 2022, 03:07:11 am »

Am I doing something extremely wrong or is the balance still a work in progress?

I'm in March 2022, multiple Magics researched, but no way to cast them. Almost 50 research topics with 90 scientists and each take at best 5 days, usually vastly more. The strongest weapons I have are still HMGs and X-equipment, and it takes a ton to actually take someone down, not really sure how to take someone in alive except for luck (police batons, darts and tasers are not even close to useful). In my last month I had 34 landed UFOs, a camp, a nest, 2 forts, over 20 other missions and at least 40+ UFOs that didn't land within my borders. I've researched outcast mages, pirates, orcs and goblins completely, with a lot of legionaries, wizards, barons and similar also researched. I tried just skipping a month to see how long it would take, at this pace it would literally take me thousands of hours to get through an in game year. All of this is with China start.

9

XPiratez / Re: Discord BS

« on: March 15, 2022, 02:38:56 am »

Wow, now this was an extreme shock. I thought we were done with drama after H, but I guess this community can't get a break. I'm kinda sad that my paranoia of something like this having a big chance of happening due to the current political climate prevented me from joining communities on Discord, in the end, proved true. I have only contempt for any kind of censorship whatsoever, and as such have no pleasant words to say about this situation. Just good luck in finding a safer haven and calmer seas.

10

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

« on: January 31, 2022, 10:41:32 pm »

Can confirm you can get mechs way before you get tanks. I think I had them more than a year before tanks. I had an early gnome so that helped. I also got extremely messed up by RNG and got Rogue fields warlords contact somewhere late 2604, so that might have been an issue as well.

11

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

« on: January 19, 2022, 01:03:39 am »

Thanks for the tips guys! Honestly, I kinda jumped the gun on the questions it seems. Another month in game changed literally everything. Turns out I was so insanely unlucky with my researches that I had most things locked out (like gun emporium locked in 2603 kinda locked, first live ruffian I capped was near the end of 2603 and I pretty much had no access to buyable weapons of any kind outside of prizes, including craft). Another month of disks got me tornado mortars + a loader that can make use of them, shield researches including sear armor, smart magnum bullets which can actually handle most things, laser cannons and a lot of other stuff. No school grad yet tho. I'll invest more into flying squadrons. I was always under the impression that each tier of ships was designed to kill the next enemy ship level, as I thought the 4 ships in a squadron was just an unintended engine feature and not something to play consistently with. Now that I know it's intended I'll actually use multiple ships which should improve my sky game a lot.

Also the bases number was not a hyperbole, I looked at my map state atm and the highest base number I can see is 18 (https://imgur.com/a/SATyl8s), but I'm pretty sure there are a few more out there. With fortuna and the new tech I have been easily clearing the world slowly of the lower tier ninja bases, haven't tested the highest one yet. Have a cluster of 1 big and 3 small ninja bases all within a 100 meters of each other so the jellyfish will have to do as no other ship can get anywhere close due to the number of defensive ships that spawns. Tho maybe I'm just too afraid and should just make a squadron to tackle it.

I suppose I just have difficulties adapting to the way this patch is played, as I'm pretty much a "take heaviest armor and blast them in the face while tanking" outside, then "clear everything in melee" on the inside, and on the geoscape I'm extremely passive while developing plantation bases around the world, and none of those work well vs ninjas.

12

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

« on: January 16, 2022, 01:15:28 pm »

Hey guys, looking for some tips. Been playing X-piratez since who knows when, doing 1 playthrough per year. I always go in blind, so I am always behind on the tech curve, and one other gimmick I do is I don't use grenades. Used to do it in OG, and pretty much every game devolved into hot potatoing or just suiciding the strongest grenades / high ex and similar, so I grew to hate it so much I can't stand using them anymore. The patch before ninja bases came was the pinnacle of balance, difficulty and reward to me, but ever since ninjas came I can't make it past early game without using some sort of a gimmick.

Bearing all that in mind I have a few questions.

1. Any tips on air game, aka good ships and loadouts?

I have NEVER managed to properly make use of Kraken or any of the heavy weapons. They either get completely absorbed by armor, or are not strong enough to kill the ones they can penetrate. As for light weapons I used to prefer sonic, but now I'm not sure. Missiles are the only thing that works for me, but they are too expensive to maintain, and in newer versions there is SO MUCH MORE air traffic that I simply can't invest in them. And the skies are so deadly now that I'm lucky I chose Grey codex this time, as I have absolutely no clue how I would manage anything without being undetectable. Even just the clusters of ninja bases are so dense that I couldn't break through even if I had a ton of interceptors. I always have the problem that my ships are either too slow to catch up to something, or those that can are too weak to take it down, so I basically only take down very small ships, occasionaly small, and then only extremely late game manage to make squads to take down the larger ships.

2. Notably good shooty guns I should use?

Currently I am using M-laser. I have access to smart weapons and that whole tier (no Gauss or Plasma atm). The thing is I don't really know what else is above average. I usually go guns + bows into Silver Snake into Laser / Gauss / Plasma. I added Mortars into my arsenal in order to deal with the ninja turrets, as I simply can't find anything else that I can fire without immediately getting reactioned to death. This is definitely not intended as by the time I got mortars there were, at least, 17 spawned bases around the world. My actual go to strat is melee, as that was the only thing I managed to ever use with consistency.

3. How to use voodoo effectively?

This is the first time I am going for Grey codex. Usually my voodoo is limited to bugeyes landing onto a sub and then MCing through walls, that's literally it. I don't know how to effectively use ANY other voodoo ability in the whole game, so tips here would really help.

4. How to actually deal with ninja bases?

I have destroyed 5 - 6 of them, plus an airfield, but I still feel like I'm stumbling like a moron. Jellyfish obviously bypasses their defenses, so that's basically one layer I automatically am not dealing with. Then the turrets, the only way I managed to destroy them without imminent death is by mortars (and they still take 4 or more hits), but since they spawn so early I assume there are many other ways to do it. Specifically the 14mm 4 square ones, the small turrets are not a problem. I even feel like my heavy armor is barely up to scratch for this mission, as plenty of my units survive with slivers of health left.

13

XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports

« on: December 18, 2020, 01:44:57 am »

Game crashes when trying to look up JUGULATOR/SYN or JUGULATOR/SYN (SEA) in bootypedia. Same thing if I want to see the result from the research screen. 0-G can be accessed without any problems.

Edit: Built the armor and equipped it. Works normally on missions. Only bootypedia entry crashes the game.