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XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: February 03, 2025, 08:30:46 am »

Yeah, thats what I think too. A well placed rocket can do more damage than voodoo.

I think for most VooDoo I'd agree. There is access to a lot of different damage types through Voodoo that sometimes helps (wand of airlessness is very good at capturing Church Reverends and Cardinals, for example), but I don't think anything VooDoo does is going to redefine your gameplay.

Except... for Mind Control. Mind Control is crazy good. Mind Control the enemy and scout their position freely. Trigger their own grenades or rocket launchers. Grab dudes with shields and force the enemy to waste their next turn trying to get through it. There is so much that can be done with mind control, and while any route can access it through Bug Eyes or Shades, only Grey and Gold get access to the redesigned Psi Amps that lets your Weird Gals really flex their stuff.

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XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: February 01, 2025, 07:56:56 pm »

I feel that in Piratez the number of missions done against enemies without PSI is a lot higher than the number of missions done against aliens with PSI. Having B or C teams on fast transports at other bases can help spread out the Freshness loss from doing multiple missions in short succession, and your 40 PSI strength units aren't gonna have to worry about that against Traders, Church, Humanists, Spartans, Raiders, Mercs, Deep Ones, Megapol, Zombies, or so on. Your A team that you bring against Ethereals should absolutely be screened, but I find that I need enough soldiers where their PSI doesn't matter that I end up keeping everyone.

Compare that to OG Xcom. Your last month is probably exclusively Ethereals, unless you left a Floater base alive for easy supply missions. Come December of year 1 the other aliens have mostly stopped flying missions, and by that point you're either ready for Cydonia or only 1 or 2 techs off from it.

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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - N7 16-Dec-2023 Flying Tiger, Hidden Tentacle

« on: February 05, 2024, 08:20:22 am »

I mean, it doesn't have to be a quick fix. I just tried one of those "Old Earth Metro" missions again with my trained Lokk'Narr and the Tentacle Hives not only either make them go insane or mind control them at the end of the first turn, they also have shields that seem immune to most I can throw at them.

I didn't know hives showed up in those missions. Anyway, their shields have a specific weakness to daze, and their attacks only deal charm damage. If you have a unit with high charm resistance that can deal a lot of daze damage, they're pretty trivial to take down. Gnomes have a bunch of armor options with great charm resistance, so a single gnome with a baseball bat or even bare fists and some melee skills can handle a hive. Having a canteen of stun refreshment can let them take multiple as long as you aren't eating all the counter attacks at the same time. Not sure how I'd handle that without a gnome. Probably keeping the lokks near cover and hitting the hives with tranq darts?

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XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: February 05, 2024, 02:20:17 am »

Is it me or underground missions are just not fun?
For example, bounty hunt mission from Jack called Bandit Cave. Player walk narrow passages searching for an enemy. Enemy units moves too so they might end up where a player have passed by already, so it's a long search. Maybe I need to gather an army to block every passage? I just stay on some crossroad and wait for an enemy, (LoLokk'Naar have good endurance so maybe it's supposed play style for underground missions)? How do you play it guys to have fun?

I definitely recommend getting a few motion trackers, whether that's through the Aye-phone or a pirate dog or two. Makes looking for the baddies a lot easier. I also think having a mining laser or two really helps. Rather than slowly and methodically clearing out the tunnels, you're just digging through them and blasting anything that moves.

Though the mining laser really only helps when you can bring your full squad. For the shorty cave missions or underwater cave missions you gotta take it slower.

On the bright side, if you don't feel like you've got the tools for those missions and your score is positive for the month, you don't have to do them. I wouldn't force your gals to run missions that you'd rather not unless they were mission critical.

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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - N7 16-Dec-2023 Flying Tiger, Hidden Tentacle

« on: February 01, 2024, 01:53:36 am »

Now that I have finally gotten the 30mm cannon, things have been going better.

Anyway, since I saw someone mention that they turned their starting base into a science base, and me noticing that, with runts and brainers, I am at nearly my (current) max of 155 people:

Do some/most of you also make a dedicated 'production' base?

I certainly do. Dunno if that's the standard thing to do or not though. There's a lot of dependency buildings in this game, which seems to lend itself towards specialization. And besides that's what I would do in base Xcom, so its second nature. You start to get better crafting recipes, to the point that dedicated engineering bases easily pay for themselves. I also tend to have an interception hangar and a troop carrier/support vehicle hangar in each base, since some missions require specific kinds of craft to participate in.

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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - N7 16-Dec-2023 Flying Tiger, Hidden Tentacle

« on: January 26, 2024, 12:39:55 am »

Ok, June went alot better (5400 score). Thanks everyone for your tips! I just hope it stays that way for a while.

So, now that I did Bounty missions, how exactly do I use those to get research? I am kinda confused with that tip.

After completing a bounty mission, you'll usually get some sort of trophy item that can be worked by your runts to make tokens. Jack usually gives stuff like execution trophies, the Mutant Alliance is sometimes gives trophies but also sometimes has people you rescue to get their tokens, and the Goblin Bank has old coins, old treasure, money with the word old in front of it. First you have to research the trophy and then use your runts to make tokens. Your runts trade those tokens in for whichever prize you're interested in. The prize then needs to be researched, at which point you'll be able to purchase the item in question on the black market. Prizes follow an order as well. If you want Jack's 30mm cannon (B2), you need to first get and research the B1 prize Confederate Gear.

Also of note is that you can gain access to later bounties, as detailed in the Bounty hunt Lvl D article. Once you have met the requirements, you can move on to rank C missions, which is more pink missions with a higher token return.

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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - N7 16-Dec-2023 Flying Tiger, Hidden Tentacle

« on: January 25, 2024, 08:51:22 am »

With regards to making a second base, everyone's got their own strategy to it and I agree with the idea that having a steady supply of weapons and troops will be useful if you're going to defend them. But some of the unique structures in this mod allow for other approaches. For example, a base with just an access, lift, radar station, and then a bunch of plantations will provide you with radar coverage and passively generate wealth even if there isn't anyone or anything stationed there. Enemies still have a chance of locating and attacking your base, but as long as the plantation was active for more than 2 months you made money overall. You can write if off as an expense and set up another base without having lost anything. And if you have some of these in strategic locations already, then when its time to start expanding to a true secondary base, you can repurpose one of your radar bases and already have some infrastructure setup. Plantations (and a few other facilities) can be directly built on top of, reducing the amount of time it takes the new facility to be built (though you don't get a refund for the original facility).

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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - N7 16-Dec-2023 Flying Tiger, Hidden Tentacle

« on: January 24, 2024, 10:27:43 pm »

Well then, here is my save game.

Thanks anyway for the help and advice.

Do you remember when you unlocked Bounty Hunting? I noticed you had the missions unlocked, but had not unlocked any of the prizes, found any of the trophies associated with doing bounties, and that the pages in the ufopedia were marked unread. This leads me to think you only just recently got the tech for it. Bounties are a huge boon, not only are the missions they unlock great for your score, but their prizes are incredibly useful especially when you don't know where everything is on the tech tree. Simply accrue enough tokens and unlock the thing you need at any given moment, no need to worry about tracking down a rare item or interrogation. I think once those start popping up, you should be good to go.

Anyway, you're not in any sort of unrecoverable phase. Your hands are looking great and you've got good armor and weapons for this stage for them. Your economy is doing quite well, enough that you could set up a radar base on one of the other continents to catch whatever landed ufos are cranking their score up. My guess is its excavators buzzing around, but I'm not as adept at reading the charts as others.

The other piece of advice I would give is to make sure you research any boxes or crates you pick up from missions. They tend to be quick studies and can often have very useful items inside of them.